Through Straights and Through Bends
by blackanise
Summary: On the long, treacherous road to the Fireflies, Ellie finds herself growing up in ways she never expected. Falling in love with Joel, who can't decide whether he sees her as her own person or as the young daughter he lost, will strain their growing bond. And soon, the most brutal winter of her life will test Ellie herself - and may even destroy what she and Joel have come to share.
1. Chapter 1

The hardest thing for Ellie had always been the silence.

Silence was the perfect storm of fear and doubt. It echoed in her head and every echo returned louder, telling her she was going to end up alone, that this man Marlene hired was going to dump her in the woods and go home which was what any _normal_ person would do.

So she tried to fill the space between them with stupid chatter, miles and miles of it, getting shot down by Joel at every turn. Eventually they got back to where they'd started, a weird, tense quiet that left Ellie to pick herself apart with doubt.

Man, did she ever hate silence.

She thought about that as they picked their way on foot through the underbrush of what probably used to be a suburb. Ellie had heard of suburbs: they were filled with families that all knew each other, where the grownups were friendly and their kids hung out together. Weird little blocks of houses where people lived so they could drive to work somewhere else and then back again. She didn't really get it, but it still sounded better than the quarantine zone, which was all she'd ever known.

Ellie found herself wondering, as she watched the wary shift of his shoulders, whether Joel had lived in a suburb, if he'd talked to his neighbors and gone to the movies with his family and had a job that didn't involve smuggling kids past military checkpoints. It occurred to her that she'd probably never know anything about his family, or if he'd even had one.

Smacking a branch out of her way, she imagined a wife and two kids for him. Joel's wife must have been pretty but kind of dumb, she reasoned, to be able to put up with his bossy, grouchy self. The kids had to be pretty young, she decided. It'd be weird if they were her age.

Eventually, Ellie lost patience with making up an imaginary life for Joel and jogged up beside him. _Here we go_, she thought wryly, _attempt number one hundred and thirty-five._

"Hey," she began, clambering over a piece of upturned pavement, "where'd you say we're going?"

Joel didn't break stride. "Acquaintance of mine, could help us with transportation."

"We're going to find your brother first, right?" Ellie prodded. "And he's gonna help us find the Fireflies? And what do you mean transportation – you got a plan for how we're gonna get to your brother's place or are we just kind of shitting in the dark?"

"The plan is to find my acquaintance, and see what he can do to help us get to Tommy's," replied Joel. "And the expression's 'shootin' in the dark'."

"What! Seriously?"

He grunted. "Yeah."

Taking her embarrassment at being corrected in stride, Ellie quickened her pace to keep up with Joel, who'd already moved on from the exchange to examine their surroundings.

"Did you live in a place like this?" she asked as he scanned the street and rows of houses on either side. "I can totally see you in one of these houses with a dumb short fence and a pool in the backyard and a big ol' pickup truck!"

Joel's reply was quiet. "It was a little different in my day, but yeah, I lived in the suburbs."

"What, that's it? That's all you got for me? No cats or dogs or barbecues? Wife? Kids?"

"Look, I'm trying to concentrate on gettin' us through to Bill's in one piece, and playing twenty questions ain't gonna help that."

Ellie changed tack.

"…So, your friend's name is Bill?"

Joel sighed. "Yeah."

After that she tried a couple more times to get conversation out of him, but Joel's one-word responses and need-to-know basis didn't give much to go on. It wasn't until she cracked out the bad puns she'd learned from one of the soldiers back at the school that Ellie heard a noise that sounded suspiciously like a snort. Maybe it was more of a sound of disgust, but she decided to chalk it up as a success regardless. Joel couldn't hold out in cranky silence forever. The guy was kind of a tough nut with a thick shell, but somewhere between now and getting wherever they were going, Ellie was determined to crack him.

o

Bill's place turned out to be a lot farther than the 'few miles' Joel had promised. By the time they'd made their way across five hours of fields and abandoned country roads, Ellie's feet were killing her. Between that and the swarm of infected they got for a welcome party, she was ready to be done with their road trip.

The news they'd really be getting a car perked her spirits up, though. As the two of them followed Bill to his second safehouse, she practically hung on Joel's arm with excitement.

"So we're gonna have it all to ourselves?"

"Yeah."

"And you're gonna drive?"

Joel grunted affirmation, his eyes watching the alleyways around them and Bill's wide-ass back.

That seemed too good to be true to Ellie – the only cars she'd ever ridden in were military transport, and they'd never let you stop to piss when you needed to. Not that there was any guarantee Joel would, either, but she liked her chances better in a car of their very own. She'd driven a couple of times, for a few minutes while one of the soldiers' C.O. wasn't around, but Ellie liked riding shotgun better. Riding along with Joel seemed like the first part of this whole shitty trek that could actually be kind of fun. A minor kink in the plan stood out to her, though.

"When was the last time you drove, anyway?"

"Ellie, would you be quiet? In case you didn't notice, we're tryin' to sneak through here incognito."

The girl lowered her voice to a stage-whisper. "Yeah, but I mean, it's a serious problem! What if you get us in a wreck, or you can't even remember how to start it, or – "

She could practically hear Joel's teeth grinding, but it was Bill who put a stop to the conversation.

"The both of you, shut the fuck up!" he growled, waving his machete at them. "Keep it to yourselves until we get to the goddamn safehouse, alright? Knew I shouldn't've agreed to this in the first place, Joel and Joel's tresspassin', loud-mouthed brat…"

Bill's grumbling trailed off, but the fierce look of reproval Joel cast back at Ellie, combined with the sounds of clickers not far away, kept her from giving more of a retort than a muttered "fuck you too, buddy" under her breath.

Tense, careful quiet prevailed – breached only by occasional sharp bursts of gunfire – until they reached the safehouse.

"It's really more of an armory," Bill clarified as they began to sweep the rooms.

It didn't look like a safehouse _or_ an armory to Ellie. Converted from an old church, the high stained-glass windows of the main room weren't even boarded up, and the whole place was littered with so much stuff around the edges it could have passed for one of the street markets back in Boston.

None of the stuff was looked like it was for fighting, though, except for a few cases of ammo here and there. Joel collected those almost immediately, picking up a low but intense-sounding conversation with Bill about their plan to get to the other side of town and their truck, while Ellie poked around in the miscellany of junk. Most of it was pretty boring: dust-crusted furniture and spare parts and boxes. People's personal items, too, the owners long gone. But nothing that really interested Ellie.

The room that looked like it must be Bill's, though – a ratty mattress in one corner, bottles and evidence of food scattered around – was a better find. Lying on the dresser, underneath a pair of hole-riddled socks, was a stack of books.

Reading had always been a favorite hobby of Ellie's, although at first glance it didn't look like Bill had anything she'd like. But closer inspection revealed a comic book, tattered but still readable, and nestled carefully underneath it, a magazine with a shirtless guy on the cover.

_Jackpot_, thought Ellie with a snort.

Quickly, she stuffed the comic book into her backpack for later. The porn was probably good for a laugh, though, so she flipped through it quickly.

Ellie whistled at the size of one of the guys' junk and scrunched her nose up at the page. "That can't be comfortable," she commented to his companion in the picture, who was on the receiving end. He looked pretty happy about it, but Ellie couldn't imagine how. Something that big seemed like it'd split her in half. Maybe that was the appeal.

She flipped quickly through a few more pages, skimming the images. Most of the guys were muscular, and hairy, and kind of _old_. They looked nothing like the guys in the magazines the girls at the school had smuggled in.

"Ellie?"

Joel's voice broke her from the mesmerizing spread of naked dudes with a start. Ellie scrambled to get rid of the evidence of what she'd been looking at, and in her panic she shoved the magazine into her bag with the rest of her stuff. It was just in the nick of time, too. Joel appeared in the doorway, looking disapproving.

"You're not touching anything in here, are you?"

"Nope."

She adjusted the backpack, avoiding eye contact.

Joel hesitated a moment, still looking suspicious, before giving a tired nod and a jerk of his head. "Good. C'mon, then, we're ready to go."

Ellie blew out a breath and followed.

o

In the ensuing chaos, she forgot all about the magazine until later, going over her haul in the truck.

"What else did you get?" Joel sighed when she showed him the purloined issue of _Savage Starlight_. Ellie couldn't tell whether he was amused or pissed. The guy had been in a weird mood, quiet and even sourer than when they first met, since they met up with Bill. Maybe Bill had said something to get him all grouchy, or maybe it was something Ellie had done. She had no idea. What she did know was that she had a hilarious opportunity to mess with him and maybe lighten the mood a little.

With a sly smile, she pulled out the cassette tape first, handing it across the seat.

"This make you nostalgic?" she grinned.

"Y'know, that is actually before my time," retorted Joel, but he took the tape and popped it in.

It was time for the coup de grace. Ellie waited a second before pulling out the porno mag and making a big production of flipping through it. "Wow!" she exclaimed, feigning shock. "How would he even walk around with that thing?"

Predictably, Joel immediately tried to make her give it up.

Ellie stalled him off, retreating with her plunder. A seed of genuine curiosity was beginning to form as she thumbed through page after page of beefcake. Who found this attractive? Some of the guys looked almost as old as Joel. It had never even occurred to her that people that age thought about sex, let alone did it.

Bill, apparently, had thought it was hot enough to bust a load all over one of the spreads, which made the last few pages of the magazine not only disgusting but completely unreadable. It was good fodder for teasing Joel, though. The idea of him trying to explain that was just too good to resist.

"…Why are these all stuck together?"

In the front seat, Joel mad a choking noise. He seemed to be struggling for words, and Ellie abruptly realized they were both acutely aware of the fact that _he_ had almost definitely caused some sticky pages of his own at some point.

The joke had taken them into awkward territory fast, and Ellie backpedaled as hard as she could to head off any excruciating talk about the birds and the bees.

"Haha, just fucking with you!" she blurted, hoping the laugh sounded natural. It must have; Joel's breath of relief was hard to miss.

Ellie tossed the magazine, not even a little disappointed that she wouldn't get to take a closer look at it later. It had caused more than enough weirdness already. Joel was just the guy getting her to the Fireflies, and he was a grownup, and kind of a dick – even though she liked him better than most of the adults she'd tangled with. The less reason she had to think about him naked or jerking off, the better. He was _old_, Ellie reminded herself sternly. Old and a fucking hardass.

With that thought firmly in her mind, she climbed into the front seat. It still felt too weird to say anything, so she blew air through her lips instead, making stupid motor noises. At least that seemed to ease some of the awkwardness off.

The music helped, too. There was something soothing about the rise and fall of the singer's thick Southern accent, the twang of his guitar. Cheesy as all hell, and not the world's best recording, but it did the trick. Ellie sighed a little and started to relax.

Whatever the magic was, Joel didn't seem to be feeling it. He cleared his throat loudly. Ellie, determined not to be set back, turned the music up and gave him a small, crooked smile.

"You know what?" she announced, "This isn't that bad."

And it really wasn't. The inside of the truck was warm and dry, Bill's tape had its own sort of dumb, kitschy charm, and out of all the people she could be on the road with, her life in their hands? Joel didn't seem like such an unlucky draw.

"Why don't you try to get some sleep?"

Ellie scoffed. "I'm not even tired."

"Why don't you pretend to try to get some sleep then, and let me focus on the drivin'?" Joel clarified, shooting a look over at her that said _end of conversation_.

A slow smile spread across Ellie's face. "I've got a better idea. You ever played 'I spy'?"

"Yeah, reckon so," he replied, "but I ain't playin' it with you."

"How long is the drive to your brother's?"

"Couple of days."

She snorted. "Are you telling me you seriously want to be stuck in the car for two days doing nothing but looking at the boring fucking road?"

"Trust me, the road'll give me plenty to pay attention to."

"Come on, Joel. One round. What could it hurt?" Ellie could tell she almost had him won over. Almost. Almost…

He capitulated.

"Alright, fine – but after this you leave me alone."

"Deal."

"Go ahead and start."

"You sure?" Ellie snickered. "I'm pretty good at this game! Don't wanna take any unfair advantages over a feeble old guy."

Joel shrugged, his palms flattening across the wheel as he took them through a broad turn. "I don't think that matters much if it's just the one round. And I ain't that old."

"You're pretty old."

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him giving her a skeptical look.

"How old do you think I am?"

She'd done it! He was talking to her willingly. _Score._ "Oh, I dunno… You're probably, like, sixty, right?" Ellie grinned.

He snorted. "Yeah, that's real funny."

"Ok, so how old _are_ you?"

"I'm fifty-two."

"Whoa! Seriously? I was just fucking with you, I thought you were like forty-five." Ellie squinted over at Joel, trying to see it. He did have a lot of wrinkles, but she'd figured that was because he scowled all the time. "I guess you do have a lot of gray in your hair. And you're the one who thought I was twelve."

"Might as well be."

She pulled a face. "No way! Twelve-year-olds are babies. I'm all grown up, dude. I have seen some shit."

The expression on Joel's face was inscrutable. "Yeah, I'm sure that's true."

"So…" prompted Ellie, when he didn't offer anything else, "How about that game of 'I spy'?"

"I changed my mind. We ain't playing."

"Joel! You promised!"

"Ellie, I'm serious, you let me concentrate on the road now."

"Come _on_. Just throw me a little, tiny bone here?"

Joel exhaled loudly through his nose. "What'd I say? One round?"

"Fuck yes!" Ellie grinned and punched the air. "I spy, with my little eye…something gray!"

"Is it the road?"

"Yep."

He grimaced. "This ranks right up there as one of the stupidest games I have ever played."

"That was just the practice round!" Ellie insisted, and settled down into her seat. "Next time I'll pick something harder. It's your turn, by the way."

"Yeah, alright. I spy…some dirt."

"Joel!" She slapped his arm. "C'mon, that's not how you play."

"And I said 'one round'," he pointed out.

"If you're going to be a douche about it, then forget it. I can just read my comic or something. Over and over again. Out loud."

"Ellie…" It had to be her imagination, but Joel sounded almost _sorry_. "Look, there just ain't that much out there to play your game with, alright? You come up with somethin' else to pass the time, you let me know."

Ellie smiled.

"You know 'twenty questions'?"

o

Somewhere between their fourth round of twenty questions and the Pennsylvania state line, tiredness finally caught up with Ellie. She was curled up in the passenger seat, hands tucked under her head, and snoring softly.

Sarah never snored.

Joel remembered that clearly, the way her breath had flowed in and out, a quiet whistle on the nights she'd tried to stay up and fallen asleep with him on the couch. This girl was about as unlike his daughter as anyone could be, with her standoffishness and her constant cussing and the angry set of her mouth.

If anything, Joel thought with a wry snort, she was more like Tess. A firecracker, and older than the world meant her to be. But she was good, too, like Sarah. Innocent, as much as anybody could be anymore. She could still look at the world with hope.

_But she ain't either of them_. He shook himself free of the thought violently, of the ghosts of everyone he'd lost. Ellie reminded him of them all. The sooner he dropped her off with Tommy, the better – as long as he _wanted_ to get rid of the kid, he couldn't lose her. She couldn't become another one of those ghosts.

"God dammit," Joel growled under his breath.

Over in the passenger seat, Ellie shivered and stirred, but she didn't lift her head. Joel turned up the heat a little, even though he was already plenty warm.

The little sigh of contentment that came from the girl put a part of him at ease that he hadn't even realized was anxious. Joel glanced over at her, eyes sweeping the hunched-up outline of her shoulders and back. She looked so small. For a second, he almost reached over to tuck a chunk of hair that had pulled loose from her ponytail behind her ear.

Bill had been right, Joel realized.

He was fucked.

o

Ellie woke to the sound of gravel grinding under the truck's tires. Everything else was silent; Joel must have turned the music off. Outside, the sky was pitch black, headlights giving way to darkness a few feet ahead. Yawning, she rubbed her eyes with the heel of her palm. The dashboard clock read 2 AM. Beside her, Joel was shifting around.

"Joel?"

He glanced over at her in the middle of tucking his handgun back into the waistband of his pants. "We're just stoppin' for a minute. Go on back to sleep."

Instead, she sat up. "Is everything okay?"

"Yeah, we're good. Just stay in the car. I'll be right nearby."

True to his word, Joel didn't go more than fifteen feet from the truck – just far enough for the darkness to swallow his back. Ellie squinted to see what he was getting up to.

After a few moments, the familiar sound of liquid trickling carried back to her. _Oh._ Her cheeks burned. And then, for some utterly fucked reason, she remembered that stupid magazine. It was the worst timing _ever_. Ellie tried really hard not to think about whether Joel was hung like the guys on the pages she'd seen. The more she tried not to, though, the more the idea pushed itself into her thoughts.

_What the fuck, Ellie!_ she chided herself. Guiltily, she turned away to give him some privacy.

Joel climbed back into the truck, and Ellie cleared her throat.

"You still awake?"

"Yeah," she admitted. "I have a hard time sleeping in cars."

"Well, how 'bout you try countin' sheep."

Ellie made an indignant noise. "Do I look like I'm five or something? I'll stay up and keep you awake so you don't pass out at the wheel and run us off the road."

Joel didn't respond, except to put the truck back into gear. They rumbled along in silence for a few miles before she spoke up again.

"Um…can we talk or something? I know that's not exactly your thing, but I really don't wanna go back to sleep just yet."

He grunted, but it sounded like an agreeable sort of grunt, so she pressed on.

"You don't even have to talk, actually. I can do all the talking for both of us! It's just so fucking _quiet_, it's freaking me out." She blew air up into her bangs and watched the road knit itself out of the darkness at the edge of their headlights. "…This is so weird. Being out in the open, I mean. Back in the QZ, I kind of…didn't ever think about how all this stuff was still out here, you know? Like, we knew about it, but it might as well have been Mars or something."

"Used to be a whole world out there," Joel muttered. "Now it's just more of this."

Ellie wasn't sure if he meant the empty, occasionally junked-up road or the darkness.

"…What'd it use to be like?"

Joel shrugged. "It was busy. Hardly any abandoned buildings. Cars and people everywhere, lots of noise, lights. Things looked new." In the dim of the cab, Ellie had a hard time making out his expression. "It's hard to describe."

"Try."

"What's it matter? It ain't comin' back."

Ellie sighed, running a hand across the dashboard. "I'm just curious. It's something I'll never get to see, y'know? You were there. Hearing you talk about it is probably the closest I'll ever get."

Joel's voice got hard. "Well, I don't know what to tell you. Wasn't that different from the way it is now, Ellie. No infected, and things worked for the most part, but people…they were basically the same. People ain't changed that much."

"I heard people used to be good."

The silence lasted longer this time. Ellie glanced over at Joel. His hands were tight on the steering wheel.

"Whoever told you that, they told you wrong."

Something in the air felt like when she had tried to tell him she was sorry about Tess. Joel's tone was completely final. _I'm just a package_, Ellie reminded herself. _And he's just a delivery guy getting me where I need to go. I don't need to know about his past._ But no matter how many times she told herself that, a part of her still wanted to know what was in Joel's past that he hated talking about it so much.

People had obviously fucked him over. But so what? People fucked everybody over. If that was the same between now and before, then Ellie didn't see what the big fucking deal was. She was fourteen and she was used to that by now.

She thought about Winston, the soldier back at her school who had big, square hands like Joel's that he would clap on her shoulder and laugh at some dumb joke. How he'd scared off the kids that used to try to take her shit, shown her how to get a guy in a chokehold and how to throw a better punch.

She thought about how, predictably, looking out for her had stopped being convenient for him one day, and that was that.

It hurt, but she got over it. Maybe Joel was just sensitive. Or maybe whatever happened to him was worse. Either way, it was obvious the subject was closed.

Slowly, Ellie leaned back into the headrest and slipped into sleep. She dreamed she was surrounded by a mob of runners, clawing at her on all sides. Across the room, from somewhere hidden, Joel shot them down one by one before they could ever touch her.

Even though she couldn't see, Ellie knew it was him, because she felt untouchable. Safe.

o

The next time she woke, the tape was playing again. Joel was cussing to himself, and it didn't take long to figure out why: there was a fork in the road ahead, and it looked like the road they meant to take was all jammed up.

A sign off to the side informed them that they were in Pittsburgh. Ellie stretched, wondering if Joel was in a better or worse mood than last night. From the bags under his eyes, it seemed like he'd driven straight on without a break. He was probably tired and cranky. With a yawn, Ellie decided it didn't matter.

"Now what?" she asked.

It didn't surprise her when, instead of answering, Joel just checked the rearview mirror and frowned. The lines in his forehead got deeper when he did that. _It suits you_, thought Ellie peevishly.

Joel's scowl deepened. For a split second, he looked so incredibly exhausted that Ellie felt a pang of guilt and wanted to tell him to forget the whole thing and turn back before he lost any more sleep on her account.

The look passed in a flash and Joel shook his head.

"Screw it," he muttered, and turned them toward the clear section of road.

The ambush, in hindsight, shouldn't have come as a surprise. The whole scenario was way too fucking suspicious. But Ellie still protested for a second when Joel told her to put her seatbelt on, and she still felt a moment of furious betrayal when the guy in the road pulled a gun on them. _And I wanted to help you, you fucker!_

They careened down the street, Joel's driving amazingly steady - until something huge slammed into them, and Ellie blacked out.

o

"Get out," Joel ordered as soon as she came to and realized they were still in one piece. "Quick."

_Yeah, no shit_, thought Ellie, but she didn't have a chance to even get her bag before a pair of rough arms grabbed her by the waist and dragged her out of the truck.

"Let go of me, you chickenshit!" she shouted.

To her surprise, Joel didn't even think to reach for his weapon. He reached for her first, as she kicked and screamed at the asshole pulling her away, and even when a second guy came around the other side and started pummeling him, Joel's hands wrapped around her ankle and tried to hold on. Amid the flail of limbs, Ellie saw his head slammed into the gearbox once, twice, and she felt the grip on her foot slacken.

The tenuous connection broke, and they were dragged in opposite directions.

"Joel!" shouted Ellie, her voice cracking with terror. For herself, for him – in that moment, they were the same thing.

Feeling herself manhandled and lifted clean off the ground made Ellie struggle even harder, throwing elbows and biting and clawing, her heart in her throat. The sound of breaking glass from another part of the garage barely registered. All she could make sense of were the hands grabbing at her, the rage at being tossed around like a bag of supplies. Even her terror for Joel slid beneath the immediacy of survival as the man backhanded her to the ground and loomed over her.

Winded, she couldn't make her arms cooperate to fight the guy off. Hands wrapped around her throat and squeezed. This wasn't how Ellie wanted to die. She'd given it some thought, lately, and helpless on the ground under some filthy scavenger wouldn't even make the bottom of the list.

If she died fighting beside Joel, at least it would mean something.

The thought was unexpected, but it sent a jolt of energy through her body that brought her stunned limbs back to life. She fought back hard, trying to break free of the grip on her neck. Everything felt like it was going far away. _Get to Joel_, her mind shouted._ Get to Joel. Get the fuck up, Ellie, and get to Joel!_

And then, like she'd wished him into existence, Joel appeared. He kicked the man on top of her in the head and followed him to the ground with a snarl.

As Ellie struggled to catch her breath and clamber to her feet, she could hear the sound of Joel slamming the man's head into something hard, over and over. She barely registered horror at the sound of cartilage and bone crunching. Instead, there was a thrill in her veins, mixed headily with terror, at the thought of Joel's rage to protect her.

Plus, the asshole had deserved what he got. He was trying to kill her for no fucking reason!

"Motherfucker," she coughed, staggering to her feet. She could still feel the imprint of hands around her windpipe. "What is _wrong_ with these guys?"

Her companion's hands on her arm, pulling her up, were a relief all their own. Joel was unexpectedly gentle as he steered Ellie back toward the truck. It should have freaked her out, after being thrown around and choked, but somehow the touch grounded her instead, helping her to get her bearings back.

More surprising was the fact that Joel didn't let go even after she was up and moving. He stayed with her, the other hand pressing lightly at her back, until they reached the door of the truck. Then he pulled her pack out and tossed it to her.

"Catch your breath," he said gruffly, his tone at odds with the gentleness of the touch that still tingled between her shoulder blades. "We're leaving."

There was a bruise swelling under Joel's eye and a scrape across the bridge of his nose. His breathing was coming hard. The scrapes across his knuckles stood out to her for the first time as he swung his own pack up onto his shoulders.

_Thank you_, Ellie wanted to say. _For not ditching me to get away. For killing that guy to save my ass. For protecting me._

Before she could get any of it past the tightness in her chest, something caught her eye, a metallic flash of light at the far end of the garage. _What the fuck…?_ she thought, and then it registered.

"Get down!" she shouted, as the window next to Joel's head exploded in a shower of glass.

Both of them scrambled for cover, Joel behind the truck door and Ellie behind an old desk that didn't look like it would provide much protection. "Stay down," Joel ordered.

_You don't have to tell me twice,_ she thought, heart hammering in her chest. A volley of gunshots rang out over their heads. Ellie thought for a minute. She was small; she could flank them without being seen, take a couple of them out with her knife. If Joel tried the same thing, he'd get shot up.

She tried to communicate something to that effect with hand gestures, mouthing _I'll go around_, but Joel shook his head firmly.

Pointing at the ground with one finger in a stern motion for 'stay here', he crept away to the other side of the truck, handgun out and ready. The second his back disappeared out of sight, Ellie felt a clenching sense of dread, and she reached into her pocket to feel the reassuring, solid shape of her knife. _I'm not alone_, she told herself, trying to remember to breathe. _He's coming back. Everything's cool._

Moments later, she heard the sounds of a struggle from the other side of the garage, followed by gunshots. Silence followed moments later.

_Fuck this_, Ellie thought, glancing around to make sure nobody was coming up behind her, and then crept across the gap between her hiding spot and the truck. A few feet away, there was a slick smear of blood. A man in a wifebeater lay facedown in it, gurgling. Another two men were sprawled across the entrance to the garage.

"Fuck, Joel," she muttered under her breath.

These guys probably had kids, or girlfriends, or something. She hated thinking about that, because she knew Joel didn't. Joel just killed whoever and whatever got in his way. She wanted to like him, and if it came down to it she'd kill one of these fuckers to save his stupid ass, but that part of him fucking terrified her.

Another round of gunshots echoed somewhere farther away, but she couldn't tell where they were coming from. Quickly, Ellie made her way to the low window behind the truck and vaulted through it.

Now she could see: out in the street, Joel had taken cover behind a rusted-over car. He was taking heavy fire from a couple of the guys who had attacked them. "Shit," mumbled Ellie, looking around desperately for something to distract them from Joel. There was jack shit; even the gun on the nearest dead guy had an empty clip.

"Alright, you motherfuckers," she said, mostly to herself, picking up a length of pipe. "Come and get a piece of this. Sorry, Joel."

Running toward the back of the room, where she'd spotted a door, Ellie knocked the pipe against every surface that looked like it would make a loud noise. The effect was instant. Both men out in the street whipped their heads around toward the garage, and Ellie saw Joel take one of them out in the ensuing confusion. The second guy was still standing when she ducked down again, but she could hear fists hitting a body. She hoped it was Joel hitting the other guy, and not the other way around.

Three more men had burst into the garage while Ellie rang her makeshift alarm. They had the exits covered, and she swore under her breath. All of them were between her and Joel.

But two of them had their backs to her, and one was heading off, away from the others. Ellie circled around behind him, keeping in the shadows of the overturned furniture that littered the room. The man must have caught a glimpse of her backpack or something, though, because he started to shout "Hey, the other one's over here!"

Only a couple of words made it out before Ellie leapt up, swinging the pipe at his head, and knocked him to the ground. But it was enough. His buddies heard the commotion and headed toward the source of the sound. Between the two of them, with their guns up, there was nowhere for Ellie to run. _Shit shit _shit_,_ she thought, _they're going to fucking find me!_

Then one of them gagged, stumbled, and was pulled to the ground, an arm wrapped tight around his neck.

His partner turned on his heel, giving his back to Ellie, who took the opportunity to scramble out of her hiding spot. On the floor, Joel was climbing to his feet from behind the man he'd just choked out.

The second guy shouted "Shit!" and trained his gun on Joel, who was raising his own weapon, but not fast enough, and before she knew what she was doing, Ellie had launched herself onto the hunter's back and knocked him to the ground. The adrenaline rush kept her on top of him for all of three seconds, punching and flailing at him. She was pretty sure she knocked his gun away. Then a big hand took her by the shoulder and pushed her off, and she looked up just as Joel broke a two-by-four over the guy's skull.

"Fuck!" Ellie breathed, scrambling to her feet and brushing herself off. "You okay?"

"Fine," replied Joel gruffly. He had already bent down to rifle through the dead guy's clothing for spare supplies. "You?"

"Uh-huh. These guys are fucking _everywhere_ though."

"Yeah. We need to get out of here. Should be a bridge we can cross, if we can get to it on foot…"

Ellie nodded and glanced at the ground by her feet. She fiddled with the straps on her backpack for a second. "Hey, Joel?"

"What?"

"Don't tell me to stay behind like that, okay? I can help."

Joel hesitated a moment."Look, you did good, getting them off me back there. But you also nearly got me killed. If I tell you to stay put, I want you to stay put. Alright?"

With a frustrated almost-scream, Ellie stomped her foot. "No, it's not 'alright'! What if something happens to you? What am I supposed to – "

"You're not supposed to do anything! You're a goddamn kid, Ellie. You leave this," he waved the gun in his hand, "to me."

She looked up at him with pursed lips and a stubborn set to her chin.

"I want to help you. I owe you for covering my ass all the time, right?"

Joel set a hand on her shoulder, and bent down to look her in the eyes. There was only steel in his expression.

"What'd I say, back in Boston?"

"…What you say, goes."

"Yeah. And what I say is that you hang back and I handle the fighting. So let's just stick to that for now, we clear?"

Ellie scoffed. "Sure, boss."

She might have imagined it, but she thought she saw him clench his jaw at that. The guy was a fucking minefield of sore spots. Mentally, she added "boss" to the list of things that set him off. Maybe if he'd just _talk_ about things with her, Ellie thought bitterly, she'd know what to avoid.

At the door of the garage, Joel turned back.

"Ellie." He beckoned her with a terse motion of his hand. She hesitated a moment, then met his eyes.

"Yeah, Joel?"

He let out a sigh. "C'mere. Let me look you over."

Something warm, a little like relief that he wasn't pissed at her and a little like something else she couldn't place, battled with the resentment burning in Ellie's chest. The warm feeling won out, and she jogged over to his side, holding her arms out with a resigned sigh so he could get a look at her.

"I'm fine. See? No scrapes, bruises, splinters or other life-threatening injuries."

Joel's brow furrowed for a moment. Then he nodded sharply. "Yeah, alright. Let's get this show on the road, then."

This time, Ellie followed right on his heels.


	2. Chapter 2

Joel cleared a path for them through the maze of blocked-off streets and makeshift checkpoints the hunters had made by arranging disabled cars. _I guess they're the new military_, Ellie thought with disgust as she chipped at a painted-over quarantine sign that now warned "ARMY PIGS YOUR TIME IS UP". She wondered whether the hunters saw themselves as heroes and liberators. As far as she could tell, they barely qualified as human.

Up ahead, Joel beckoned her to keep up.

"Ellie, stick close," he scolded. "There'll be a lot of 'em in these buildings."

At least this time she didn't fall behind because she was hanging around reading out of the joke book she'd found, Ellie thought. Instead of retorting, though, she followed Joel into the nearest unblocked doorway.

He was right about the buildings. They ran into their first group on the second floor, and Ellie watched as Joel took them out one by one.

Four buildings over, a hunter in a ski mask got the drop on him, and Ellie bashed the guy over the head with the closest thing at hand – a crumbling brick. Joel finished him off with a boot to the head. For about the millionth time, she really wished he'd let her have a gun.

She had to admit, though, Joel was pretty efficient on his own. They made it back down to the street without any more serious trouble, and he signaled that the coast was clear.

"…Aw, no," groaned Ellie when she saw the road ahead. It was underwater in what looked like ten feet of murky green rainfall, with no way to cross on foot. "Are you serious?"

"Afraid so," Joel replied.

He scouted up ahead, climbing onto a partially submerged SUV and judging the distance between it and the next spot of dry footing. From where Ellie was standing, it looked like about a seven-foot leap.

She must have been right, because Joel muttered, "I can't make that jump," and turned back to her.

"Well, what do we do?" she asked.

"I'll see what I can find."

Privately, Ellie was grateful Joel didn't give her shit for not being able to swim. It was surprisingly tactful of him. Didn't keep her from feeling useless, though.

_No gun, and I hold us up every time there's a really deep puddle. I'm about as much good as a third leg growing out of his armpit,_ the teen reflected.

She was still stuck on that thought when gunfire and screams split the air from up ahead. _Joel!_ was her first, panicked thought, until she realized he was still in the water. The noise was coming from the overpass.

Ellie hugged her arms around herself, and hunkered down.

A minute later Joel returned, pushing a wooden palette in front of him. "Come on," he urged, "we'll cut through the hotel."

o

The palette got Ellie up onto a makeshift bridge that led across to a window in the front of the hotel, but Joel ended up having to come up through a little coffee shop at the opposite end. While he searched for a way up to her, Ellie glanced around curiously.

"Did you go to coffee shops a lot?" she asked, noticing the way Joel lingered a little in front of the rusted machine.

"I did – all the time."

It was almost a little bit fun, she decided, putting him together one tiny piece at a time from the mundane details he would sometimes let slip. She could see him in a place like this now, ordering lunch and flirting with the waitresses.

Tess would have been right at home in a coffee shop, too. Maybe Joel would call her up and they'd sip their drinks together by the window and grouse about the other customers.

Thinking about Tess stung more than Ellie expected.

Pushing the memory of the fierce older woman who reminded her so much of Riley out of her mind, she went back to her cheerful interrogation of Joel.

"And? What would you get?"

"Just…just coffee."

She snorted. Now that was typical Joel.

Internally, she pegged him as a double-shot cappuccino kind of guy. Ellie wasn't sure what that meant, but Riley'd had this book about a hardened private investigator who kind of reminded her of Joel, and that was what he'd drunk. Or…maybe things had been different before. Maybe he was a different kind of person who'd have ordered a different kind of coffee.

"Hey," Joel called, startling Ellie out of her thoughts. He'd managed to get up behind her without her noticing. "Come on, we're crossin'. I'll go first to make sure it's clear, so you hang back."

Inside, the hotel looked even more dilapidated. A grand-looking staircase had collapsed in the center of the room, and mold stained all of the walls. At least it smelled a little better, Ellie thought, wrinkling her nose. The water was shallower, too, so she ran around checking the place out while Joel investigated for a way to the upper floors.

At one end of the lobby, she found a check-in desk with its service bell still out "Cool," she muttered, giving it a light tap. The resulting peal felt like it must have rung through the whole hotel. _Oops._

"Ellie," Joel called from the other side of the room, "knock that off."

Rolling her eyes, Ellie continued her investigation of the desk.

There was a clipboard with a hand-written list of guests, ending on October 4th, and a tall brass trolley off to one side. "Whoa, this place was oldschool," she murmured.

In her imagination, the hotel was new again, all gleaming wood and sparkling glass, and she and Joel were on vacation together. She would be somebody famous, like a politician or a rock star, Ellie decided, and Joel could be her bodyguard. It was nice to not be a kid in ratty jeans and a smelly, hole-riddled shirt at the end of civilization for a minute, even if just in her mind.

Putting on her most dignified impression of a well-to-do adult from before, she drawled, "Oh, I'll be checking in for one night, and I would like your finest suite, please."

"What the hell are you doing?"

Joel had come over from the opposite end of the room, looking puzzled-borderline-disapproving.

"Checking us in. Duh," Ellie replied. She gave her imaginary concierge a look of long-suffering. "Oh, uh huh, he's always like this. Why, _yes_, you can take my luggage upstairs!"

Joel snorted. "You are a weird kid."

She grinned at him, spinning around and flashing her light in his face. "So what do you think, darling, should we get the presidential suite or the penthouse?"

"I think you should stop screwin' around, and help me get us up to the second floor. Found a spot that should work."

"Oh, come on, Joel. It was a fucking joke! Loosen up a little bit, jeez."

"Let's just keep moving." Joel's back was already turned to her, and Ellie puffed her cheeks out in exasperation before following.

"Do you even know what a joke is?" she asked. "I've still got that book, y'know. I could teach you. I think I make a great teacher, if I do say so myself. Your sense of humor can still be saved! It's not too late!"

Joel kept his back turned, intent on setting up a ladder.

"Think I'll pass," he responded dryly.

The ladder slotted into place, and Ellie climbed up after him. Joel didn't so much as throw back a "watch your step".

Maybe calling him 'darling' had gotten under his skin, she realized with a jolt of embarrassment. It had all been part of the stupid joke. If he thought she was actually hitting on him, then he was just being way too sensitive. Not her problem.

Now that she thought about it, though, she _had_ been imagining booking a room for the two of them. In the fucking penthouse suite. Yeah, that did kind of look bad.

Ellie groaned internally, and contemplated just dropping off the ladder to her certain death in a foot and a half of brackish water.

For better or worse, Joel chose that moment to lean over the ledge above.

"C'mon," he grumbled, "we ain't got all day."

And that was it. Just his usual brand of short-tempered impatience. Ellie breathed a sigh of relief, and wrapped a hand around his forearm when he reached down to pull her up.

o

Things went pretty smooth for a while as they snuck through the upper floor of the hotel. Apparently, everybody had bailed out of here without bothering to grab any of their stuff, because the rooms were a goldmine of supplies. Joel took out the handful of hunters they ran into, quick and quiet, and Ellie managed to keep herself from making any more stupid comments.

Only problem was, all the staircases were blocked.

"Shit," Joel muttered, trying what felt like the hundredth door. It was locked, like all the others.

"Hey, what about over here?" Ellie called, pointing to an elevator with its doors maybe a foot ajar. "I bet I could fit through that."

As soon as he glanced over, Joel shook his head. "No, just hold up. Let me try to open it."

"Be my guest."

She stood back, watching the corridor behind them for any more guys who might still be prowling around. The muscles in Joel's back bunched and strained under his shirt, and finally the doors creaked open with a hair-raising sound.

Joel went first, and climbed the ladder with Ellie close on his heels. She shut the hatch behind them with a firm _clang_.

"Just in case," she supplied with a shrug.

The elevator shaft led to another, and this one was a way tighter squeeze – she was pretty surprised Joel managed to cram himself through there. They dropped down onto the top of another elevator car that wobbled precariously under their feet. Ellie grabbed onto Joel's arm for balance and then immediately let go, laughing it off.

Joel nodded up to the opening a few feet above their heads. "You find me something to climb on."

"You got it, captain," replied Ellie. She stepped into the cradle of his hands and he boosted her up with an easy strength, like he was familiar with the weight and balance of her already.

Ellie had just enough time to wonder _how long have we even been on the road together?_ before something creaked under her, and the support under her foot fell away with a sickening lurch.

"Aw, _fuck_!" she shouted, and grabbed onto the ledge of the doorway at the same moment she heard Joel shout "Oh shit!" from below.

The moment she pulled herself up, Ellie wheeled around to look back down the shaft, her heart hammering.

"Joel?"

There was no answer. Something clenched in her stomach.

"Oh my god! Joel! Say something, you fucker! Joel! _Joel!_"

There was a splash down at the bottom of the shaft, and then –

"I'm alright! Are you okay?"

"No!" The tightness in her throat showed in her voice. _Fuck. _"You scared the shit outta me!"

Ellie swallowed back the lump that had lodged itself in her chest, taking a deep breath. She _really_ didn't want Joel to see how much she was freaking out.

"I'm – I'm gonna climb down there, okay?" she called, lowering a leg into the shaft and willing the uncertainty to stay out of her voice.

"No!" Joel's tone was sharp. "Water's too deep. Stay up there. I'll make my way up to you."

"No fucking way! I'm not staying up here by myself!"

"We ain't arguin' about this."

Ellie bristled. "I don't even have a fucking weapon!"

That seemed to give him pause. The splashing got quieter, like maybe he'd stopped swimming away. Finally, she heard him shout up, "Shouldn't take more than twenty minutes. _Stay put._ You'll be fine."

Then everything was silent.

It was the first time she'd been separated from Joel since Marlene dropped her off with him, and Ellie had never felt more exposed. She'd been alone plenty in her life, but she'd gotten so used to having Joel at her back the past few days…she might as well have been naked.

To kill the nerves, she took the penknife out of her pocket and flicked it open, shut, open shut open shut open shut.

"Come on, Joel," she muttered.

Where did elevator shafts even go? The basement? How deep was the water? How long would it take him to find his way back to her? The whole building was like a stupid maze.

_Twenty minutes, he said_, Ellie reminded herself. _I'll give him twenty minutes. Then I'll go looking for him._

o

Twenty minutes came and went. Or at least, it felt like it did. It could have been five minutes, or an hour. Underneath the way she kept checking either end of the hallway for hunters, Ellie was surprised to realize that the uneasy feeling in her gut wasn't for her own safety.

Instead, she was thinking of Joel.

Down in the bowels of the hotel, fighting his way through a cluster of infected or a search party of hunters. Hurt. Bitten. Maybe with a busted leg from falling. What else could be holding him up? Determination ran in the guy's veins, and if he said twenty minutes then it should have taken him twenty minutes.

What was she doing waiting around while Joel needed her help?

"Oh, god dammit."

With a moan of frustration, Ellie pushed herself to her feet, tucked her knife back into her pocket, and headed for the nearest stairwell.

o

_When did I start worrying about that old geezer so much?_ she wondered as she slipped past a battered-down barricade. Joel could probably take care of himself, but Ellie couldn't help feeling like he needed her. _Stupid, Ellie. Stupid, stupid, _stupid_. You're not supposed to_ _care about him!_

But the more she tried to talk herself out of it, the more it sunk in: she was more scared for Joel than for herself.

That was the kind of thing that got people killed, Marlene always said. And Ellie had had no problem living by that motto. Especially not since Riley.

Ending up dead scared the shit of her, but the thought of something happening to Joel on her account was even worse. It spurred her into motion as she heard the noises of a struggle ahead, behind a set of doors marked "Ballroom". _What if it's clickers?_ the rational side of her asked.

_But what if it's Joel?_

Her mind made up, Ellie pushed the doors open, and just in time. A guy had Joel on the ground and was pushing his face down in a puddle of water. Joel's gun lay a couple of feet away.

Ellie froze.

If she jumped on him, the guy would probably shoot her. If she tried to get close to get the gun, he'd probably hear her and shoot her.

But if she didn't do anything... Joel would be dead.

_Fuck_, thought Ellie, _I _really_ hope this dude is a bad shot._

She sprinted over and snatched up the handgun, aiming it with a shaky hand. The hunter looked up at her, his eyes big and surprised. He looked _scared._ Ellie hesitated for a split second, her breath catching in her chest.

She pulled the trigger.

It was a bigger blast than she remembered, firing a gun. Her arm jerked wide to the side as the man's head exploded in a mist of blood and gristle. Joel burst up out of the water, gasping for breath, and relief flooded through Ellie's numb nerves.

His eyes landed on her with confusion.

"Man," she breathed shakily, "I shot the hell outta that guy, huh?"

Whatever it was in Joel's expression, he seemed to shake it off, rising to his feet slowly. "Yeah, you sure did."

Ellie's knees felt a little like jello. She sank down onto a crate behind her, the gun dangling limply from her fingers. Once she'd fired, all the power and threat had gone out of the thing. Now it was just heavy.

"I feel sick."

Joel snatched it out of her hands, a displeased twist to his mouth.

"Why didn't you just hang back like I told you to?"

The words crashed over her like a bucket of ice water. He was _scolding_ her for saving his life, because she didn't just do what she was told? Ellie felt something in her chest crumple. She looked up at him, searching for any sign of acknowledgment for what she'd just done.

"…Well, you're glad I didn't, right?"

He sneered. "I'm glad I didn't get my head blown off by a goddamn kid."

Fury blazed through her, and she surged to her feet.

"You know what? No. How about, 'hey, Ellie, I know it wasn't easy, but it was either him or me, thanks for saving my ass'?" Joel stayed silent, looking away from her. Ellie bit her lip. "You got anything like that for me, Joel?"

He just looked angry. Honestly, she didn't know what she was expecting.

"We gotta get going," muttered Joel after a moment, and turned away. Ellie shook her head in disbelief at the stupid plaid pattern of his soaked shirt, feeling an irrational anger toward it, toward the pack on his back, even the crease of his jeans around his knees.

_I can't believe you_, she thought furiously. _You got me thinking I cared about you when you obviously don't give two shits._

Out loud, she said, "Lead the way."

o

Neither of them spoke much on their way out of the hotel. Every so often Joel would give her an order or tell her to watch out, and Ellie would reply with one-word answers.

As she and Joel heaved on the furniture blocking a door together in complete silence, she realized that she was sulking. It chafed, seeing how childish her own behavior was, especially since that could only give Joel more of a reason to brush her aside and not take her seriously. But she really, really did not feel like making idle chit-chat with him right now.

Plus, Ellie didn't want to be the one to fold first.

The cabinet moved, finally, and Joel hauled it out of the way with a strained grunt.

"Watch your step going down," he muttered. It didn't even sound sincere.

Ellie flipped him off behind his back.

It wasn't until they reached the bottom of the staircase, and another pile of furniture blocking the way, that the anger she was feeling solidified enough to put it into words. At the bottom of the pile, there was a small gap, just big enough for somebody with narrow shoulders to fit through.

"Turn around, we're not going through here," said Joel.

"Why not?"

"Because we can't see what's on the other side. Could be a trap, infected – I ain't riskin' it."

"I could get through," she pointed out, gesturing at the hole. "I could check it out, and if the coast is all clear we could pull this stuff down and go through here."

Joel shook his head.

"No way. There's too much that could go wrong."

"But it _won't_! This is bullshit! Why won't you let me do anything to help?"

He stuck his pointer finger in her face. "Because you are a kid, and you're a goddamn liability."

Ellie's anger exploded in her chest like a pack of fireworks, hot and acid. "I fucking am not! I had your back earlier, you know I did! So let me do it now."

"Ellie, that ain't how this works. I am an adult, and I can handle myself. I do not need you watching my back."

"Yeah, but you weren't! You were fucking getting your ass kicked!" Joel opened his mouth to argue, but she kept going. "You keep saying you don't need me, but you do. Just _admit_ it. Neither of us is going to get through this alive if we don't rely on each other!"

The ringing silence that followed made her realize just how loudly she'd been talking. Joel took a deep, sharp breath through his nose. _Oh shit_, she thought, _now_ _I'm gonna get it._

"I understand," he finally said, very quietly, "that you want to help out. But your friend Marlene hired me to get you where you need to go in one piece, and I plan to do that."

"It's not gonna kill me to do some of the heavy lifting, Joel. You know, pull my own weight?"

"Ellie, that – that ain't your place. A kid your age shouldn't be shootin' people, or putting her herself out on the front line."

_But he was going to kill you!_ Ellie thought fiercely.

And, as much of a dick as Joel could be, especially right now, it occurred to her that she would do it again in a heartbeat. Joel was all she had left, she realized with a start – other than Marlene, who Ellie might never see again, he was the only person she had to fight for. The only one obligated to give a damn about her, too, even if he was getting paid.

Somehow, this didn't feel like part of a business transaction.

"It's not like I love throwing myself in harm's way," she pointed out quickly, "I just don't want you to get fucking killed and have to find the Fireflies all on my own."

It was a bad lie, but better than telling him straight up that she was starting to care a little too much. That would _definitely_ get him to look at her like a liability.

Joel fixed her with a sharp look. "Yeah, I reckon you don't want that." He turned and started heading back up the stairs. "Come on, we're gonna find another way around."

"But – "

"Don't argue. You want to help? Help by doing what I say. When the time comes, I'll let you have your shot. But not on this."

Was he saying what she thought he was?

"…Okay."

With the slightest of nods, Joel led them back up the stairs. They found their other way through: a covered balcony, overlooking an open courtyard full of hunters. When Joel told her to hang back, Ellie just about lost it on him again – but then he put a rifle in her hands.

His own hand was broad and warm on her shoulder as he showed her how to work the action, how to sight her target. Trepidation was thick in his voice.

"Make every shot count," he told her, and something fluttered in her stomach.

She tried not to let it show. Their eyes locked.

"I got this."

Joel didn't look convinced, or maybe he couldn't shake the last of his guilt over putting a kid behind the trigger, but after a moment hesitating, he moved away. At the edge of the platform, though, he turned back and said quietly,

"Just so we're clear about back there, it was either him or me."

_Oh,_ thought Ellie. _Guess this is me getting my chance._ She raised the rifle to her shoulder.

Her first, nervous shot nearly took Joel's head off, and blew four feet wide of the guy she was aiming for.

The second shot hit true.

o

"How'd I do?"

Joel was crouched over the body of a dead hunter, picking over his belongings. Ellie padded over to him slowly, the rifle still in her hands. It still unnerved her a little, the way he handled the dead like they were nothing but _things_.

She wondered if she'd killed this one, or if Joel had.

"How 'bout something, uh…a little more your size," Joel said, holding out a handgun. That must have been what he was looting the guy for, Ellie realized. Not supplies, not ammo, nothing for himself. Just…something she could defend herself with.

He stopped her when she reached out to take it. "It's for emergencies only," he said firmly.

She'd wanted a gun since they'd been stopped by the soldiers in Boston, but it felt different now. Emergencies-only was more than fine with her.

Suddenly, she was grateful for him fighting her on this.

Wishing there were a way she could tell Joel she understood – that she got it, now, why he was trying to keep her out of the action – Ellie nodded.

"Okay."

Their fingers touched for a moment as he handed over the gun, a little service pistol with a snub nose. It reminded her of herself in a way: scrappy, small, and probably hopelessly outclassed for the fight it was in. Rounded down soft at the corners, too.

Ellie tucked it into the back of her pants and cast one last look down at the face of the man on the ground as she passed him.

It was hard to tell, but she thought it looked like he'd been shot at far range.

"Now – now, the safety's on. Do you know how to switch it off?" Joel sounded almost nervous; he was practically hovering over her. Ellie was a little surprised he didn't make a grab for her waistband and try to take the gun back.

"I do."

Joel didn't look convinced.

"Okay. You just…you just gotta respect it. This is not – "

"Joel," she insisted, "I'll be careful."

He gave her a doubtful look, but nodded. "Right. Well, you want me to teach you how to shoot that thing – just lemme know."

Abruptly and completely against her will, Ellie's mind pulled up the memory of Joel's hand on her shoulder, the heavy, careful press of his palm as he lined her up with the rifle sight. She'd wanted to lean into that touch, she remembered. A tinge of pink rose on her ears.

"I'm, uh – I think I'm good. I can handle it. Safety off, bullet in the chamber, point it at the bad guys – yep, got it," she rambled, jogging ahead a few yards.

By the time Joel caught up to her she had mostly managed to shake the feeling off. They walked shoulder-by-shoulder for a while without eye contact before Joel cleared his throat awkwardly.

"Listen, uh – "

At almost the exact same time, Ellie blurted, "Look, you don't have to – "

The two glanced sideways at each other, their gaze catching. Joel looked away first. He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, and Ellie decided to try again.

"Thanks for trusting me not to blow my hand off with this thing."

The older man was silent for a long second.

"You earned it back there," he admitted gruffly. "Just don't make me regret it."

Ellie rolled her eyes, but when Joel wasn't looking, she smiled. At the small of her back, the gun was a firm weight, already warming to her skin.

o

In hindsight, she was surprised she hadn't pulled her new sidearm on Henry when he jumped Joel; if that didn't scream "emergency", nothing did.

Still, maybe out of habit, she'd gone for her knife first. Even now, after fighting their way across the city with Henry and his little brother, Ellie wasn't sure exactly why she hadn't drawn on him. But it was looking like a good thing – Henry practically had the hunters' guard schedule memorized, which made him her and Joel's best bet on getting out of the city.

Having Sam around didn't hurt, either.

He was kind of a quiet kid, but pretty nice once she showed him her collection of comic books that Joel had been adding to whenever he found them. Ellie made a mental note to thank him for that. It was pretty thoughtful, and it looked like it had made her a new friend.

"Whoa!" Sam was laughing, turning one of the pages upside down in fascination. His nose crinkled with a mixture of disgust and delight. "Would your head really explode like that in outer space?"

"Oh, absolutely," Ellie lied, as if she had any idea how shit worked in space. For all she knew, it could be true.

"These are pretty neat," sighed Sam, setting the comic back down on top of her bag between them with a sort of reverence. "Henry never lets me have anything cool like this."

Ellie made a sympathetic face. "Only take what you need, and all that?"

"Yeah."

"He probably just wants to make sure you get enough to eat. If I starved to death because I was carrying these dumb comics instead of food, I'd feel like a fucking idiot."

Sam shrugged. "I guess."

"But Joel would never let that happen!" she added. "'Cause he looks out for me, like your brother does with you."

"Is he your dad?"

Ellie debated whether to lie.

On the one hand, it probably wasn't smart to tell a couple of strangers the truth. They didn't seem like bad people, but you never knew. But on the other, something itched under Ellie's skin when she thought about calling Joel her dad, even as a cover.

It was funny: she'd never really stopped to examine their relationship this whole time. Things had been way too crazy to bother with it. He was just Joel and she was just Ellie, and they relied on each other. End of story.

But now, thinking about it, Ellie realized that she'd come to care about the testy old timer way more than she thought. She'd had no problem shooting a guy for him, something she'd always sworn never to do except in self-defense. And she'd been willing to risk getting shot, too. Something about Joel brought out the crazy-fucking-stupid in her, that much was obvious.

He was way more than a stranger, but they weren't exactly friends, either.

And, she realized with an uncomfortable jolt, they'd never be partners. Joel still thought of her as a burden, and just a kid, even if he'd folded on the gun thing. _So where the fuck does that put us?_ she wondered. _What am I to you, Joel?_

"Nah, he's just looking out for me," was what she told Sam. "For my mom." It was close enough to the truth. Marlene was the nearest thing she had to a parent.

"Do you like him?"

That was kind of unexpected. Ellie shrugged one shoulder, trying to be nonchalant.

"Yeah, he's not all bad. I mean, he grumbles and likes to throw his weight around, but he's really a pretty good guy. Besides, he found me all those comic books."

"Sounds like he cares about you," Sam agreed tentatively. "But I still can't believe your mom just sent you with him."

Ellie glanced down, remembering Marlene's gut wound and wondering for the millionth time whether she was even still alive. "She didn't exactly have a choice. Some shit went down."

"Henry told me one time, he'd rather wrestle a clicker than ever trust me with a stranger."

She snorted. "I'm guessing your brother hasn't wrestled very many clickers."

"Sometimes I wish he'd let me do more of my own thing, you know? But I get it. I'm all he has now."

Boy, could Ellie relate to that. She wasn't anybody to Joel, and he still kept her on the world's shortest leash, like he couldn't stand the idea of something happening to her on principle. "Yeah, I know what you mean."

"I like you a lot," Sam confided suddenly, his brown eyes full of sincerity. "But Henry doesn't really trust anybody who isn't family. Just…just don't take it personally, you know?"

That was fair. Nobody trusted anybody; it was the only way things worked at all.

But…

"I trust Joel with my life. And you can trust him too, I don't care what Henry thinks."

Sam gave her a crooked little smile. "I'm really glad we met you, Ellie."

She punched him in the shoulder with a soft smile of her own.

"I'm really glad we met you guys, too."

o

The plan, according to Joel, was to wait until dark and then sneak past the hunters and their guard station.

"Like, right under their noses?"

"It ain't my first choice either, Ellie, but it'll take us a week to gather the recon Henry's done if we want to go this thing on our own." Joel sighed and rubbed his eyes.

He looked exhausted, and Ellie didn't blame him. They'd been on the run non-stop for a day, and she didn't think Joel had slept since even before then. She couldn't remember him taking a nap while they were in the truck.

"Joel, I _really_ don't like this."

"What's your alternative, then? Huh? What do you propose?"

"Henry seems like an okay guy. Talk to him, get him to wait until we can come up with a better plan!"

Joel shook his head. "They're meetin' some people. It's gotta be tonight."

Out the window, Ellie could see a group of hunters gathered at the checkpoint, laughing and fucking around. All of them were armed to the teeth. There had to be at least fifteen in total.

Rushing that party looked like about the worst idea she'd ever heard, but if Joel was even considering it, there probably wasn't another way around to the bridge. At least, not one that wasn't even more dangerous. If they wanted out of this city, they had to go through there.

And she'd told Sam earlier that she trusted Joel with her life, hadn't she?

"Fine. But I still want to go on record as saying this is the _stupidest_ thing we've ever done. Out of an incredibly long list of stupid, dangerous stuff for the amount of time we've known each other."

The 'we' slipped out thoughtlessly, and Ellie kicked herself. _We aren't a team,_ she thought viciously. _We aren't partners. I don't get a say in this. _Plus, she thought she remembered Joel saying something like that to Tess, and kicking herself turned into wanting to sink through the floor and disappear.

But mercifully, Joel wasn't looking at her. His eyes were fixed on the window. Ellie wondered if he was coming up with the same odds as she was.

"No, it ain't a great plan. But we got no other choice," he said flatly. "So we're gonna get some rest, and you are gonna do _exactly_ what I say, and if you do that, we _might_ just make it out of here in one piece."

"Yeah, I got it – do what you say, when you say it. Stay out of the way. Be good." She sighed and flopped down in a torn-up office chair. "So. What's your first order?"

"Try to rest up."

"In this place? Fat fucking chance."

Dark eyes leveled her with a hard look. "Just try."

"Alright, alright, I'll try to stop thinking about my impending death by fucking machine-gun-tank and take a quick nap in this incredibly comfortable chair."

Ellie blew a piece of hair out of her face and closed her eyes, more for effect than anything; she knew she wouldn't be able to sleep. Beside her, she heard Joel shift, the creak of his weight on fake leather.

The rustling continued. Ellie resisted the impulse to look over and see what he was doing. Part of her wanted to know he was as thoroughly freaked about this as she was, but another part wanted him to be sleeping calmly, the unshakable protector.

When she finally gave in and cracked an eye open, he was looking back at her.

Seeing that she was awake, he cleared his throat and rubbed a hand over his beard. The lines around his mouth seemed deeper.

"Ellie," he began cautiously.

She tried to play it like she'd just woken up – rubbed her eyes, yawned a little, the whole nine yards. "Huh?"

"I know you weren't sleepin'."

Ellie flushed bright pink. Joel didn't seem pissed, but it was embarrassing anyway.

"Look, I don't want you worrying about tonight."

"I'm not worried – "

"You being too keyed up to sleep ain't gonna help any. I need you clear-headed and rested up, alright?"

She hugged herself defensively. "I said I'd try."

To her surprise, Joel leaned over the armrest of his chair and put a hand on her shoulder. He hadn't touched her much except to drag her from place to place or boost her up onto things. It felt like when he'd taught her how to shoot the rifle, heavy but gentle, full of an unspoken urging.

"Listen, there's a real chance this thing could go bad. I ain't gonna lie to you about that." His grip tightened. "But you need to know that no matter what, I am not going to let anything happen to you."

"Yeah, I know, Joel."

Joel pulled away, but he didn't look satisfied. "There ain't gonna be a lot of time to talk, so I'll say this now: you need to use that gun, you use it. But you run first, if you got that option."

Ellie searched his face, trying to figure out what it was that he wasn't saying. "Okay. I will."

He nodded and settled back in his chair.

"Get some rest, Ellie."

Five hours later, when she roused him from his own fitful sleep on Henry's command, she still hadn't slept a wink.

o

It went bad.

It went really, _really_ bad, really fucking fast.

"What the fuck, Henry!" Ellie shouted, jerking her arm out of the man's grip as he tried to pull her along.

When Henry glanced back at her, the choice was written all over his face. Then there was another spate of gunfire and he and Sam were running the other way. Sam threw her a wide-eyed look before they disappeared into the dark.

It took Ellie maybe half a second to make her own decision. Her feet hit the ground with a thud that reverberated through her whole body, and she realized, _holy shit, I'm dead. I just fucked myself over._ From the look on Joel's face, he was thinking the same thing. He looked surprised, almost, that she'd throw out her chance to get away.

_Yeah, well, you and me both,_ she thought wryly.

"We stick together," she told him, all the breath gone out of her.

In the dark, she couldn't be sure, but she thought she saw an expression of relief cross his worn features.

Joel wasted no time in wrenching up a garage door and getting her inside ahead of him. More bullets rained down in the alley, and Ellie heard him grunt in pain, but then he slid under and the door clanged shut.

"Oh fuck!" She ran to help him up. "You okay?" Outside the hunters were shouting to each other, a clamor of anger and the exuberance of the chase. _Fuckers_, she thought.

"I'm fine," he grunted, shaking her off.

Ellie drew her pistol, just in case anybody came in after them. "How the fuck do we get out of here?"

"Door's over here, c'mon."

They cut a path through the rest of the building, which was crawling with hunters. Ellie put more bullets into the walls than she did into the guys that rushed them at the exit, but she managed to cover Joel long enough for him to unblock the doors.

Outside, the bridge was in sight, and Ellie's heart leapt with anxious hope.

She sprinted straight for the opening in the fence. Joel followed close behind, his footsteps pounding in her ears. They were close, _really_ close, when a bright light and the roar of an engine erupted at their backs.

"Fuck!" shouted Ellie, putting on a burst of speed.

Bullets sprayed over her head, tearing up the concrete around and in front of her, and she instinctively covered her head, but she kept running. Her legs felt like they were about to give out. From somewhere to her left, Joel roared, "_Run_!"

"I fucking _am_!"

Concrete blocks loomed up in front of her, and Ellie vaulted over them, feeling the skin on her palm tear. She leapt the next obstacle on sheer adrenaline, tripped, tried to catch herself and lost momentum. The sound of the Humvee behind them was deadly close, and she tried not to imagine it dragging her under its wheels and grinding her up.

There was a grunt of pain; for a second, Ellie thought it came from her. _Joel's behind me,_ she realized. The bottom dropped out of her stomach.

She whirled just in time to see him stumble to the ground, clutching his leg, and there was a sick moment where she thought he wouldn't get up again.

"Joel!"

_I can't carry him,_ came the panicked thought. She froze, torn between escape into the sheltered, dark tunnel that was just a few feet away, and going back for Joel.

Hesitation cost her a few precious seconds, but just as she tore herself free of her indecision, Joel dragged himself to his feet and staggered forward. When he saw her, his face contorted into a mix of anger and fear. "Ellie! What the hell are you doing? Go on!"

"Fucking hurry, Joel!"

Her voice was cracked with panic, and the second Joel caught up to her she grabbed his shoulder and pushed him ahead of her.

"I told you to run," he growled.

"Yeah, and I told you we stick together!"

They hopped the last barrier and found themselves standing at the edge of the bridge. In front of them, it cropped out over the water and crumbled off into nothing. There was nowhere to run.

Ellie felt like the air had all been knocked out of her.

"Oh fuck," she breathed.

Joel's eyes were wild. "How many bullets do you have left?"

_Is he nuts?_

"They're gonna kill us!"

He spun on her. "What other choice do we have?"

"We jump!" She pointed to the liquid darkness under the bridge.

"No," Joel said immediately. "It's too high and you can't swim. I'll boost you up and you run past 'em." There was no pause, no hesitation in his decision.

Light flooded the bridge. The Humvee had found them. It rammed the cars that formed their tiny, inadequate refuge.

"Oh shit." Ellie backed away, toward the edge, her heart hammering.

Joel moved to place himself between her and the Humvee. It gave another push, and the car in front of it scraped toward them. "Oh my god," he murmured, quiet and resigned. She'd never heard him like that – he almost sounded scared.

"You'll keep me afloat!"

"Ellie," warned Joel.

If they stayed up here, both of them were dead. Ellie made her decision.

"No time to argue!" She sprinted toward the edge, and leaped off.

"_Ellie_!"

The shout that followed her down was rough with panic, and Ellie felt a sharp pang of guilt knife through her before gravity caught up with her. Then she plunged, and forgot everything but sheer terror.

Icy, black water surged up around her as she broke the surface, knocking the breath from her lungs and stabbing her skin like needles. She felt herself jostled one way and then the other by the current, a helpless ragdoll. Instinct told her to suck in a breath, but Ellie managed to resist despite the panic building in her chest.

Her backpack was dragging her down, she realized, but no matter how she scrabbled at the straps, it wouldn't come off.

Every thought was getting harder to fight through. _Oxygen,_ she realized. _I'm running out of air._

Just as Ellie prepared to surrender to the need to breathe and let the water in, her head broke the surface and Ellie sucked in a wet, burning breath.

Everything was freezing, as though her senses had been muted in the murky limbo of the water and were returning to her all at once. She could hear the roar of the river, and over it, she heard Joel's voice calling for her.

"Joel!" She spun around, trying to see him.

"I got you," called Joel, wrapping an arm around her.

Relief and an absurd sense of safety flooded over Ellie. But the current had both of them now, and a second later she felt Joel slam into something. His arm went limp at her waist.

"No! Oh no, fuck – Joel!" she gasped. He was already starting to sink; all Ellie could do was grab fistfuls of his shirt and try to keep him with her, but their packs were too heavy. They were going to drown, and it was all because of her. _No, no, no – he can't die. Not Joel, too!_

As Ellie slipped below the surface, helpless to fight it with her arms around Joel and refusing to let go of him, she thought she saw a face appear in the water above her.

It was a crazy thought, but for a moment before she blacked out, she was sure it was Winston.


	3. Chapter 3

Life rushed back into Ellie's lungs, sharp and sudden. Above her, faces swam in and out of focus – two faces, this time, and now she realized that neither of them was Winston. _Of course not,_ she chided herself, the thought still sluggish and fuzzy from lack of oxygen, _why would Winston be here? He's back in the Zone. You're alone except for – _

"Joel!"

It was more a cough than a word, but she catapulted upright as everything came flooding back, and looked around desperately for any sign of her companion.

"Whoa, whoa," said a voice, Henry's, and now she placed the face her drowning brain had mistaken for Winston. "Don't sit up too fast! You nearly drowned a minute ago."

What was Henry doing there? He'd ditched them earlier, and it didn't make any sense for him to come back. Nothing made much sense. Ellie's head ached, and there was a growing chasm of dread in her stomach.

"Where's Joel?" she asked, sitting up anyway.

"Relax. He's just over there. I gave him CPR," replied Henry evenly, gesturing behind Ellie. Around his shoulder, she could see Sam hovering, his eyes big with concern. Henry put a hand on her shoulder to push her back down. "But he took a nasty knock on the head, so it'll be a while before he comes around."

Mixed relief and anger flooded her.

"You _asshole_!" She shoved him hard in the chest and stumbled to her feet. "You just left us for dead back there! If he – if he's not ok, it's fucking on you!"

Sam looked downright stricken. Henry was less fazed.

"He'll be fine, just give it a while."

When Ellie ignored him, stalking off in the direction he'd pointed before, he called after her, "I _did_ pull his ass out of the river, you know!"

She didn't bother to respond. Joel was lying stretched out on his back a few yards away, and Ellie sprinted over to him, hitting the muddy sand with both knees and pressing an ear to his chest. His pulse thudded, sluggish but unmistakably there, and tears of relief pricked at her eyes. Wiping them away with the heel of her hand, she checked his head out – he had a massive goose egg, but it wasn't bleeding.

Gently, Ellie touched his face, tracing his weathered brow and stroking his cheek where it disappeared into the rough of his beard. _He's going to be okay,_ she told herself firmly. It was hard to believe when he was lying there so still. The dim moonlight of the beach threw Joel's face into relief, casting strange shadows that made him look dead. His skin was clammy under her fingers, like he was already gone.

Her hands shook violently. She hated herself for even thinking it. What she hated more was the helpless, sick feeling in her gut that the thought brought on, the realization of what a huge blow losing him would be – how badly she needed him.

"Come on, Joel. Wake up."

A hand landed on her shoulder, Sam's this time, and he looked so sad that Ellie couldn't even bring herself to be mad at him. It wasn't his fault Joel was hurt.

"Hey," he said quietly.

"Hey."

"He'll be ok," Sam assured her. "He seems pretty tough, and Henry said he's breathing alright."

Ellie nodded, sniffing and wiping her nose on the back of her sleeve. She didn't want to hear about what Henry thought. "I know. I just…it was my idea to jump in. I didn't fucking think it through."

Pursing his lips in sympathy, Sam scooted away to the other side of Joel, like he was trying to give the two of them some space.

"I'm sorry we left you back there," he muttered.

She shrugged, not meeting his eyes. "Joel probably would have done the same thing. It wasn't your idea anyway."

"It still sucked."

"Yeah. Thanks for coming back, though. Guess we'd be done for without you."

Joel chose that moment to groan, and Ellie was able to draw in her first real breath of relief, too. A smile broke over her face. Sam ran off, calling for Henry, and she reached down and gently touched Joel's elbow.

"Hey, you," she murmured as he stirred and lifted his head. "We're alive."

Carefully, she helped him sit up. He grimaced but patted her knee in acknowledgment. Ellie's heart soared, and she held onto his arm. Embarrassingly, she was pretty sure it was doing her more good than him.

"How're you feeling?"

"Head hurts," he grunted. "But I'll live."

"Good. And fuck you for scaring me like that."

There was no heat in the words. They both knew whose fault it was he'd ended up in the water in the first place. Joel wasn't looking at her, though; Henry was walking over with a big smile on his face, talking casually like everybody was on great terms.

Without a word, Joel pulled his arm free and stood, brushing himself off. He took a couple of steps toward the other man, and Ellie hung back, feeling like she was watching two dogs circling before they started tearing into each other. Henry just kept acting like he couldn't feel any of the tension, until suddenly Joel sprung at him and shoved him to the ground.

The gun was out before even Ellie could see Joel reach for it.

"He's pissed," said Henry, whose mouth was bleeding, "but he's not gonna do anything"

"You sure about that?" snarled Joel.

Sam got between them.

"Stop!"

"Joel," Ellie said sharply. She put a hand on his back, feeling the tight-strung tension there. It seemed to lessen just a little under her touch, but he didn't lower the gun. She didn't feel like defending Henry, but she didn't want to see Joel blow the guy's brains out in front of his little brother, either.

Joel's shoulders stiffened.

"He left us to die out there."

Henry was breathing hard. "No. You had a good chance of making it, and you did. But coming back for you meant putting him at risk – stay back," he added to Sam. "If it was the other way around, would you have come back for us?"

Silence answered his question.

As angry as she was, Ellie knew he was right. Joel would never have put her in harm's way for a couple of strangers. And if it meant seeing Joel cold and unmoving on the ground again, she didn't think she could make herself do it, either. It was an uncomfortable realization. Maybe being exposed to hard choices had made her hard for the first time in her life, callous even, but she couldn't deny the fact that if it came to it, she'd have saved Joel left Sam and Henry to fend for themselves.

"I saved you," Henry insisted.

He and Joel stayed in their stalemate, eyes locked, Joel's finger steady on the trigger, until Ellie stepped forward.

"He saved me, too." Her eyes flicked over Joel's face in an appeal to stand down. "We would've drowned."

For the first time since she'd met him, Joel looked stricken with indecision. It seemed to physically pain him, but in the end, he lowered the gun and tossed it onto the sand at Henry's side.

Ellie watched Sam help his brother to his feet and remembered Joel shrugging her off earlier with a small pang of envy. Henry was talking again, going on about the radio tower, but none of it registered. She was thinking about the moment when Joel's eyes finally opened, the swell of relief that had filled her and the brief squeeze of his hand on her knee.

It had felt good, being there for him when he woke up.

Blowing out a breath, she jogged to catch up with the older man, who was headed for an old rusted-out boat up ahead.

"That was intense," she said conversationally, not sure if Joel was in the mood to talk. "You cool?"

"Yeah. Let's go find that radio tower."

They skirted down the line of the beach along the water's edge. Every couple of strides, Ellie swung her arms, and the two of them were walking close enough that their shoulders almost brushed with each swing.

"What d'you think it's gonna be like when we get there?" she asked. "Being around a bunch of other people again, I mean."

Joel made a noncommittal noise, his gaze fixed on some point ahead. "Probably be nice for you to have somebody other than me around for company, I reckon."

_I kind of doubt that_, thought Ellie, but she kept it to herself. She kind of got the sense that Joel wanted her to prefer other people's company.

She hoped it wasn't because he didn't want her around. The older man was definitely an acquired taste, but she kind of liked that about him. Plus, after the things they'd been through together, there probably weren't a whole lot of people Ellie could trust the way she trusted Joel. Not that she wasn't excited to meet the rest of Sam and Henry's group, but…a part of her sort of wished it could stay just her and Joel. Things were simpler that way.

"Maybe you'll meet somebody. You know, like, maybe they'll have some hot chick with them who's old like you," Ellie ribbed.

Joel scoffed loudly. "Uh-huh, sure."

"Yeah, you're right. What am I even saying? _I'm_ gonna meet somebody. I should be wishing for hot guys for myself, not setting you up."

"You got a good imagination."

"Well, real life kind of sucks. Imagination is pretty much the only thing I got going for me." She kicked a rock loose from the sand, watching it topple away. "That's the only way I'm ever gonna have a love life, at any rate."

"Yeah, well, just don't bring me into it," snorted Joel.

Ellie's whole face burned for a second before she realized he must have been talking about before, when she was coming up with imaginary women for him to meet, not about her dragging him into _her_ love life. _Oh, fucking duh!_ _You're fourteen, that wouldn't even cross his mind, _she reminded herself furiously. _Get a grip, Ellie._

Her stomach was still doing sick little flips, though. Where had that thought even come from?

Shaking it off, the teen sprinted ahead, leaving Joel and her flustered feelings behind.

"Just don't say I never tried to fix you up with anybody," she called over her shoulder. "C'mon, last one to that boat's a bloater!"

o

They found the entrance to a sewer system a couple hundred feet past the boat. Ellie didn't exactly love the idea of being trapped underground in a bunch of concrete and metal tunnels filled with stagnant old water. But, all things considered, it could have been worse. At least having to be on the lookout for shit jumping out at them didn't leave a lot of room to stew over whatever weirdness was going on with her and Joel.

The weird part was, aside from a welcoming party of a handful of clickers, nothing did jump out at them. The deeper they got into the sewer, the more Ellie relaxed, even though she felt a little nervous not having a way out or a wall to put her back to.

Sam even found a soccer ball that they kicked back and forth until Henry told them to knock it off. The whole time, Ellie noticed Joel had this pinched look on his face, like his stomach was hurting him. Usually, he never let her out of his sight, but the minute she started kicking that ball around, he turned his back and went off rummaging for supplies.

_Wonder what that's about,_ she thought, scrunching her nose up at his retreating back.

Maybe he was jealous of her paying so much attention to Sam. Joel didn't seem like the type to give enough of a shit to be jealous about anything, though. That had to be one of the stupidest things she'd ever imagined. Still, a part of her secretly hoped it was true.

_You gotta stop being weird about him, Ellie,_ she reprimanded herself as they passed through another long tunnel with a dead end.

Joel was up ahead scouting out a path. Instead of trying to catch up with him, she let herself hang back with Henry this time. It was probably better to just give it some space for a while. Maybe then she'd be able to act like a normal fucking human being around him, thought Ellie wryly.

The sound of metal screeching startled her nearly out of her skin. While she was lost in worrying, a heavy iron door had come down across the tunnel.

The tunnel Joel had just gone into.

"Oh fuck, Joel!"

She ran up to it, looking around for any kind of release lever. There wasn't one. That was when she realized she didn't see Sam anywhere, either. Joel and Sam were trapped on one side of the gate, and she and Henry were stuck on the other.

Ellie's first instinct at being separated from Joel was to panic, but she swallowed it down and offered a shaky smile to Sam through the narrow, barred window in the metal.

"So," she tried nervously, meaning it as much for Joel as for Sam, "this is awkward."

Right as Sam opened his mouth to agree, a familiar, gut-twisting screech came from the opposite end of the tunnel. Ellie whipped her head toward the sound, and wished she hadn't. A pack of twitching, stumbling infected were pouring down the dark passageway.

"Clickers!" she shouted.

"What?"

On the other side of the window, Joel's face was ashen. His eyes were on Ellie as he stopped trying to move the gate. She knew the feeling; it was like part of her guts had been ripped out and replaced with a gaping wormhole into empty space.

"Hey, this thing isn't budging, man." Henry sounded vaguely panicked.

Ellie glanced over at him for reassurance, any sign he had a plan for what to do, and realized the only thing going through his mind right then was worry for Sam. Not that she could blame him. Every atom in her own body was willing itself to teleport over to the other side of the gate, and underneath that thought was an incessant mantra of _who's going to watch Joel's back without me?_

It wasn't going to be Sam, she realized. He was just a kid, and he wasn't even armed. What if he got Joel killed? Ellie's heart hammered in her throat.

"Just go, get outta here," said Joel roughly. It was obvious he was deeply unhappy about it, but they didn't have a choice. Ellie knew that, too, but she still hated the thought of leaving him.

_There's nothing I can do with this stupid fucking gate between us, or if I get eaten._

She met his eyes through the bars, and the worry she saw in them unnerved her even more. Joel was supposed to be an immovable rock. If he was freaked out…

"Sam, you stay close to him!" ordered Henry, a note of the same panic in his voice.

Drawing her gun, Ellie pulled away from the gate. "Henry, we gotta fuckin' move!" she urged, and gave his shoulder a shove for good measure.

"You keep him safe!"

"_Go!_" shouted Joel. His gaze was still trained on her, and Ellie tried not to feel it burning into her back as she did what she was told.

o

The clickers' grotesque sounds echoed behind them as they ran, and seemed to get closer with every step. Ellie got the nasty feeling that they were running in circles, or into a dead end. If navigating the sewers had been hard before, it was nearly impossible on the fly.

"Up there!" Henry called, pointing to a ledge a few feet ahead that would get them out of reach of the infected.

"There's no fucking time!"

It was too high to get too without a boost, and the clickers would round the corner and be on them before she could pull Henry up after her.

"It's our only option. I'll get you up there, and you pull me up."

"You might not make it!" argued Ellie. "We gotta keep running and find something else!" She was panting, and knew her trembling legs didn't have much left in them between exhaustion and the tenuous push of adrenaline, but she'd rather try to run than let Henry get himself killed.

The man's face was set, though. It was a look of stubborn determination that Ellie realized must have been the same one she was wearing before she jumped off the bridge back in the city.

"You stall any more, it really will be too late," insisted Henry, "Now get over here and let me boost you up."

"Ugh – fine!"

Ellie scrambled up the sheer concrete face, pushing off against the cradle of Henry's hands. She pulled herself up with a grunt, and reached down to give him a hand. It wasn't going to work, she realized; he was probably a good sixty pounds heavier than her. There was no way she could lift him. Down the corridor, the screeches of the infected were getting louder.

"Come on, Henry, fucking jump!" She tugged hard on his hand.

The strain felt like it was pulling her shoulders out of their sockets. Ellie practically screamed with effort, but eventually Henry leaped high enough for her to pull him up and get his other arm over the edge.

He cleared it just in time, right as six or seven clickers rounded the corner, their arms swinging and clawing in front of them. Ellie held her breath. Even her heartbeat sounded like a drum in her ears. Every twitch felt like it might give them away.

After a minute, the whole pack passed, and she and Henry both let out a gasp. They sat still for a few moments, looking at each other in shocked relief.

"I seriously didn't think you were going to make it," Ellie finally said.

Henry's face was grim.

"Yeah, neither did I."

"Thanks," she added quietly, pushing herself to her feet and offering him a hand up. "For risking it to get me up here anyway. A lot of people wouldn't have done that."

"Well, I got a kid brother. I'd want somebody to do the same thing for him."

The silence that followed that remark was stiff and awkward. Its implications hung heavy in the air between them, and Ellie wished she didn't feel like she was on trial for Sam getting stuck with Joel. _If I had a choice,_ she felt like saying, _this obviously isn't how I'd have picked it to go, either._

Instead, she turned and started checking out the wall behind the ledge.

"Hey, there's a door down here!" she called excitedly. That was their way out, and maybe it would lead around to the other side.

It was a pain in the ass getting it open with only a couple feet of room, but they managed. Henry went through first, gun drawn, and Ellie followed cautiously. The room on the other side was big and open, with a skylight in the ceiling, and mercifully free of infected.

They hadn't gone very far before Henry said over his shoulder, "Ellie, that guy you're traveling with…Sam says he's not your dad."

_And how the fuck is that any of your business? _she thought.

"Yeah, he's just helping me get from point A to point B."

"How'd you two end up together?"

"It's kind of a long story. He's a friend of a friend." Oh, shit, she realized, that wasn't exactly what she'd told Sam. It wasn't good to have a big hole in their story.

Henry seemed to pick up on it, too. When he turned around, his face was full of concern. "Listen, Ellie, I get that you probably don't want me prying into whatever you two got going on. But my little brother is stuck with him right now, and I need to know if I can trust this guy."

That kind of pissed Ellie off. What did he think Joel was, some kind of creep who'd hurt Sam or use him for bait or something?

"Well, he hasn't cooked me and eaten me yet, so I'd say yeah, he's pretty trustworthy," she quipped, and shouldered past him.

"Hey – I'm serious." Henry grabbed her arm.

She jerked free.

"So am I! Look, I know you and Joel didn't exactly get off to a great start, but I've been with him for a while, and trust me, there's _nobody_ I'd rather have watching my back. He might not exactly be friendly, but there's no way he'd let something happen to Sam on his watch. And he's tough as hell," she added with a small note of pride.

"We'll see."

The look on Henry's face was pure skepticism. Ellie sighed.

"You want to know how we ended up in the river?" she asked. "After _you_ guys ditched us, by the way, since we're talking about who's trustworthy. I jumped in, and Joel jumped after me. He practically drowned trying to save my stupid ass. So yeah, you can trust him to take care of Sam."

Turning away, she started back in the direction they'd originally been headed. Over her shoulder, she called, "Now, can we go find those guys so we can stop worrying about them, or is there anything else you want to grill me on?"

Henry took a deep breath, shaking his head.

"No, you're right. Let's just find them."

o

Ellie had been hoping they would find Joel and Sam before they ran into any more infected, but after about fifteen minutes of trudging along in wary silence, their luck ran out.

A runner rounded the corner ahead of them and grabbed Henry, grappling with him and straining toward his neck. Ellie leaped onto its back and drove her knife into its spine as hard as she could. She could feel its hands reach back and start to claw at her instead. It let go of Henry but now, with its full attention on her, it was able to throw her off. She hit the ground with a thud.

"Ow, fuck!" Too winded by the impact to get out of the way, she threw up an arm to defend herself from the snapping jaws, but before it could make contact, its head exploded in a spray of fungal gore. "Fucking thing!" she shouted, kicking at it as she scrambled to her feet.

There was no time to recover. "Come on," muttered Henry, grabbing her arm and tugging her into a sprint.

More of them were coming now, their chattering groans echoing down the tunnel, and Ellie fired a couple of panicked shots into their midst as she ran. The corridor opened onto an enormous, open chamber, and standing in the middle of it was the most welcome sight she'd ever seen: Joel and Sam, both in one piece. Even Joel's expression washed over with relief when he caught sight of her.

"Oh, thank god!" she breathed, running to him. He took her firmly by the arm. From the look on his face, Ellie could tell he was about to ask if she was alright. Not wanting to waste time, she gasped, "We gotta keep running!"

Joel pushed her ahead of him, and Ellie hoped Henry saw it. There wasn't time to dwell on vindication, though, with the horde of screeching infected tearing along at their backs.

She spotted the exit first. "Doorway – over there!"

To Ellie's confused horror, Joel stopped in his tracks and grabbed a Molotov cocktail out of his pack. He was thinking of trying to hold them off. Suddenly she regretted letting him push her in front.

"No!" She bolted back and grabbed him by the shoulder, shoved him toward the door. "Run! There's too many of 'em!"

A mad dash for the doorway followed, and Joel herded Ellie through ahead of him, swearing roughly as he wrenched the doors closed behind them. It held, thought it was hard to say for how long. He whirled on her, his face like a thundercloud.

"God dammit, Ellie – "

"Yell at me later! We gotta focus on making it out of here, right?"

Joel's lips pressed into a hard, angry line, but he nodded shortly. "Get away from the door," he said, pulling her by the arm when she didn't move fast enough. With an offended scoff, Ellie broke free.

"Jeez, Joel, I'm fine!"

But Joel wasn't finished. He grabbed her by the shoulders roughly, and for just a moment, Ellie remembered how intimidating he'd been when she first met him. But his roughness had a different quality to it now. When she met his eyes, they were bright with terror – terror for her, she realized.

"Don't you _ever_ put yourself in danger comin' back for me like that again, you understand?" he growled, shaking her a little.

"Okay, Joel, I get it, Jesus, let me go!"

To Ellie's relief, he did, running a hand over his beard and breathing hard.

"I'm gonna…I'm gonna go help Henry with that door."

Ellie nodded and watched as he headed over to the chain link fence that separated them from the only way out, where Henry was putting his shoulder into a blocked gate. Even with his and Joel's combined effort, the door didn't budge.

In the heat of her lecture from Joel, she hadn't even noticed Sam, but a clang from the far end of the room draw her attention just in time to see a pair of feet disappear into an open vent.

"Sam!" she shouted, and then turned to Joel and Henry. "He just crawled through!"

From the other side, Sam pulled away the iron bar that was blocking the door, and the four of them jostled through the narrow space. It was a long, precarious scramble up the stairs and pieces of collapsed walkway that led to what Ellie really hoped was the exit.

Behind her, she could hear Joel loose his footing a couple times, but every time she turned back he motioned her ahead. Having him bring up the rear made her nervous, but she tried to stay focused on the climb.

Finally they made it to a little room that had windows with actual sunshine pouring through, the promise of escape – but the door was stuck.

"Here, gimme a boost," suggested Ellie, pointing to a long, thin opening above the doorframe. "I can get through that window."

Joel looked hesitant. "Ellie, I don't – "

"We need to get out of here, Joel! I'm fucking doing it."

Over her head, Henry gave Joel a look that said he was sorry before boosting her himself. Sam followed a few moments after.

On the outside, the problem became clear: the door was blocked by an enormous metal cabinet.

"Well, fuck," muttered Ellie. She walked around it a few times, trying to figure out the best leverage they could use.

Sam was already putting his shoulder into it and grunting. "It's really heavy!" he gasped, looking to her for more ideas. She wished she could say she had any. Just shoving on it until it fell over was the best plan she'd been able to come up with, too.

Then the first sound of gunfire came from inside, and she felt the blood leave her face.

"Okay, shit – we _have_ to move this thing. Come on, let's both push."

The added force didn't seem to make much of a difference, and Ellie felt cold dread bubbling up in her stomach. It sounded like there were a lot of infected on the other side, and if she and Sam didn't get the door open, Joel would –

For a crazy moment, she thought _maybe if I just climb back inside and we push and pull at the same time_, but Joel would murder her.

"No going back for you…oh, man, fuck you, Joel," she whispered to herself.

"What?"

"Nothing. Just – just push harder. Come on, we can do it!"

Finally, with a groaning sound like a dying animal, the cabinet slid a few inches, and Ellie felt her heart pound.

"Oh fuck, Sam, we almost got it! Move, you mother_fucker_, move!" she screamed at it, shoving desperately until she thought her arms would give out. It skidded to one side, and the door burst open. Henry and Joel stumbled out of it. Joel was bleeding heavily from a nasty gash on his arm.

As Henry shouldered the cabinet back into place, Ellie ran up to inspect the injury.

"Oh my god, you're not – ? Oh shit, oh shit – "

"Just got too close to a nail bomb," Joel assured her quickly. "Ain't bit, at least not today."

Ellie nodded, hoping the massive relief she felt wasn't showing on her face and making her look like a giant baby. "Okay." She swallowed past the giant lump in her throat. "Okay."

"Still gonna want to get it looked at," added Joel, like he had read the lingering concern in her eyes. "If you wanted to do the honors, I'd be mighty obliged."

The thoughtfulness was new – he was letting her feel needed. Not brushing off her concern. It was a real first.

o

_Baby steps,_ thought Ellie with a smile.

Getting to the radio tower took longer than any of them expected. It didn't help that Joel got himself all fucking shot up trying to take out that sniper, Ellie reflected angrily as she dipped a mostly clean cloth into the small bowl of alcohol they could spare for wound-dressing.

"Let me see that." She took Joel's elbow to get a better angle on the spot where a bullet had grazed his bicep. He was in just his undershirt – after that encounter with the sniper, his flannel button-down had been rendered pretty much unusable with stains and holes – and Ellie counted herself lucky he hadn't gotten shot anywhere below the waist, because either she'd be sitting here with him basically naked, which would be awkward as fuck, or he'd probably just insist on doing it all himself.

"I bet there's a good joke in my book about this," she continued, pressing the cloth to the place where a chunk of his arm was missing. "You're full of holes now, right? So that would make you, like…holy. A holy man."

"Ellie," Joel said warningly. He was covering his eyes with one hand, but it was more weariness than pain.

"Oh, come on. I know you love those shitty puns."

He didn't reply, and for a minute she wondered if maybe the pain had finally gotten to him and he'd passed out. When she glanced up at his face, his eyes were fixed on something far away, and whatever it was made the lines in his forehead deepen.

She tied the last bandage off and sat back on her heels, just watching him.

"Joel? Hey, mission control to Joel, you okay in there?"

"Uh-huh," he grunted and ran a hand over his eyes. "It's just been a long goddamn day."

Ellie nodded. She could relate to that. "Henry said he doesn't think anybody's meeting us."

"Yeah," Joel replied. "Didn't ever have much hope for that. At least the supplies'll go slower."

"So much for all the imaginary hotties we were gonna bag," she commiserated. Her tone was mock-wsitful, and Joel chuckled.

"You got Sam. He's about your age, ain't he?"

"Sam is like, ten," Ellie corrected him, a little bit burned that Joel would lump them into the same age group. Actually, Sam was probably a year or two younger than her, but the difference felt like a million years. He was a sweet kid, but she definitely couldn't imagine kissing him or anything like that. "And he's my friend. It'd be weird."

The look Joel gave her out of the corner of his eye was inscrutable. "You make friends fast."

She shrugged. "Anyway, I can't believe we hauled ass out of there for fucking nothing."

With a sigh, she flopped back onto the blanket they'd laid out as bedding. It wasn't much, and she figured she'd have to let Joel have it anyway, since he was all torn up. The blanket was tiny and threadbare; they sure as shit weren't going to share.

"Well, we're on the other side of the city now. And we've got supplies, and a place to rest up for a while," replied Joel. "Ain't exactly 'nothing'."

"Are we staying here long?"

"Couple of days, I reckon. Henry wants to wait around any longer than that, he'll be travelin' on his own."

Ellie scrunched her face up at him. "I thought you two worked your shit out."

"Don't mean we're buddies," the older man replied with a snort. He pushed himself to his feet and went to rifle through the bag of supplies and clothes they'd found in one of the radio tower's cabinets. "Priority number one is gettin' you to the Fireflies."

She glanced over at him, the stained undershirt stretched taut over his shoulders and the dense hair at the nape of his neck. Something told her there was about as much to read from this side of him as there was in his face. Back in the sewers, when he'd freaked out on her for coming back for him, Ellie had been sure there was something more personal underneath the big rough front of a man just doing the job he was getting paid for. But Joel made it so hard to tell. She didn't think that was an accident.

As he pulled on a new shirt, Ellie watched him with hooded eyes. Maybe he was right. Maybe she did make friends too easy, but it was way too late to stop giving a shit about him, so why did he want her to try?

Her conversation with Sam earlier weighed heavily on her mind. Part of her wanted to talk to Joel about it, but she didn't want to bare that much of herself. There was a kind of privacy to the way the two of them kept to themselves, and as much as she wanted to know what was going on behind Joel's tired, angry eyes, Ellie wasn't ready for him to know everything she was feeling, either.

Especially not that she was scared.

If something happened to Joel and he was gone, she would be alone. It didn't matter how important it was for her to live until they made it to the Fireflies. Losing him and having to go on by herself would be worse than getting killed. She couldn't expect him to understand that, but nothing he said was going to make that go away, either.

Joel straightened back up with a grunt, stretched, and closed the window they'd left open for fresh air.

"I'm goin' to bed," he announced.

"Hey," she said quickly, before he could snuff the candle she'd been using to see by while she patched him up, "about what happened in the sewers – "

Joel's whole body stiffened, and Ellie could tell she'd tripped over a live wire.

"Ellie, that ain't up for discussion."

She pressed on. "You're the one getting me to the Fireflies, right? If you're gone, I'm fucked. You know I wouldn't make it a week out there on my own."

"A week? Try a couple of days."

"Yeah, yeah. What I'm saying is, we need to be able to rely on each other. There's no point in me getting away if you don't make it too. Right?"

There was a long, heavy pause.

"Why don't you let me worry about that." Most of Joel's face was in shadow when he replied. His tone wasn't a question. With a huge, gusty sigh, Ellie drew her knees up to her chest and rested her cheek there.

"…Okay," she mumbled.

She heard him pinch out the candle, smelled the thick sulfur of it in the air, and listened to the sound of him moving around on the other side of the room. By the time he settled in on the floor beside her, a few feet away, Ellie was almost feeling sleepy, herself. Fighting with Joel was exhausting, because just when she thought she had the upper hand on him, something reminded her that they were on the same side, and she ended up feeling like an ass. He was trying to do right by her, even if she thought he was going about it a stupid way, and she knew that.

To her left, the whistling rise and fall of Joel's breathing evened out, and she realized he was asleep.

_Tomorrow,_ she promised herself, turning onto her side and glancing over the solid, black shape of him in the murky darkness. Just having him there made it easier to sleep. _Tomorrow we'll talk about it, and I won't be a jerk._

o

That conversation never happened.

Instead, Ellie found herself trekking through the underbrush of the fields outside Pittsburgh, her shirt spattered with Sam's blood, shaking inside the too-big jacket Joel had wrapped around her shoulders.

"We have to go," was all he'd said, and she'd just nodded mutely.

Joel did all of the packing, gathering up supplies without a word or a backwards glance into the room where Henry and Sam lay, covered up with burlap sacks and the blanket that were all they'd had at hand. Even though he kept moving mechanically, Ellie could tell he was shaken.

The proof was in the way he stopped once they'd cleared the last of the city's buildings to ask, "How you holdin' up?"

"Fine." She cleared her throat. "I'm fine."

There was a hint of the same strain around the corners of Joel's mouth. Ellie felt a profound gratitude to him for holding it together so she didn't have to. One of them freaking out was bad enough.

"Good." He put a hand on her shoulder, giving it a brief squeeze before patting he arm bracingly. "You just let me know if – if you need to stop for a minute."

"Okay."

His gaze lingered on her for a few moments, like he was going to say something else, but then he nodded and turned back to clearing a path.

They didn't stop for another five hours, when the sun started going down and buildings began cropping up around them again, in twos and threes. Joel herded her into the garage of one house that had seemed to hold up better than the others, with its door still intact. Silently, they swept both floors for supplies, and Ellie stuck closer to Joel than usual.

After coming up with a handful of spare parts that Joel muttered might be useful for his rifle, and not much else, they settled into the garage for the night. A few last beams of thin, orange sunlight were trickling in through the high windows in the garage door. Even though it was early, Ellie was exhausted. Suddenly the few days they'd been traveling came down on her all at once like it had been months. She watched Joel wrestle a mattress through the doorway from upstairs, thinking, _it could have been him._ The thought made her queasy.

She didn't eat with Joel when he opened a can of beans and offered her half. Instead, she lay down on the mattress, blew out a long breath, and rubbed her hands over her face, trying to make herself pull it together.

A weight settled onto the other side of the mattress. Ellie stared at the ceiling, not wanting to look over and see pity on Joel's face, or disgust.

Her mind kept going back to the look on Henry's face before he'd turned the gun on himself. It had said everything she'd been feeling, right after Riley died. How the fuck was she supposed to tell Joel that she understood that, wanting to give up because everything was too fucked to keep going? He was all about surviving no matter what. It would sound like stupid, childish shit to him.

The realization seeped through her like cold water that if Joel had gotten bitten instead, Ellie would be in that same spot again, and she wouldn't have a way or a reason to keep going.

"Joel?" she said quietly, still not breaking eye contact with the ceiling.

"What is it, Ellie?"

"Don't you fucking go and get bit on me."

The mattress shifted some more. Finally, he replied, "We're gettin' you to the Fireflies. I think I can keep us both in one piece until then."

Ellie nodded. It didn't lift the weight off her chest, exactly, but knowing Joel was so immovable in his resolve to see this thing through was its own kind of relief. That was the difference between this time and when Riley had been bitten, she realized: she wasn't shouldering Sam and Henry's deaths alone. And Joel shouldn't have to feel like he was, either.

"Thanks," she told him, looking over at last.

Joel breathed in deep through his nose and gave her one curt nod of his head before easing himself down onto the mattress with a sigh.

"C'mon, now, you're gonna want to be rested up. We're gettin' an early start tomorrow."

"Alright."

Even though Ellie doubted she'd be able to sleep much, no matter how tired she was, she knew he was right. It was better to keep moving. She was grateful to him for not babying her, although part of her wished she could hug him and let him wrap her up in the promise of safety.

"Good night, Ellie," he murmured.

"'Night," she replied.

It was selfish, maybe even childish, but lying awake there in the dark and must of the garage, she rolled closer to him and let her arm stretch out until the backs of her fingers just brushed his shirt. It was rough under her touch, with just a hint of the heat of his body, a reminder that he was real and constant, and there with her.

Ellie leaned into that thought like an anchor, and let it comfort her until sleep found her, against all odds.


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note:** This chapter has a scene containing graphic sexual content (that involves Ellie). If you're uncomfortable with material depicting teenage sexuality, you might want to skip the very last scene. Otherwise, read on and review, as always! I appreciate all the feedback and dedicated readership, you guys :)

* * *

The supplies they got at the radio tower kept them going for about a week and a half, the way Ellie figured it, before Joel woke her up one day with a half-full tin of syrupy black beans in one hand and their dented travel spoon in the other.

"Last can," he informed her grimly.

After Pittsburgh, they'd been trying to stay out of big cities, and even smaller areas that had once been settled. Mostly the days consisted of hiking through dense trees and down hillsides, or following the interstate and then taking the long way around when buildings started to loom on the horizon. When going through a city couldn't be avoided, they stuck to skirting across outlying farms, and slept in barns at night.

But food was a problem. To get more, they'd have to go into a town, and Ellie could tell Joel wasn't any more excited about the idea than she was.

It was actually pretty uncommon to run into infected out in the wilderness, but it got worse and worse the more roads, houses and buildings were gathered in one place. Anywhere civilization had been, the fungus flourished.

With their food supply tapped out, though, it looked like they were going to have to risk it.

"There should be a town a few miles on," explained Joel while Ellie chewed over the last of the beans, slowly, turning them to paste before swallowing to make them last longer. "We'll see if we can pick up some supplies there and then push for the border."

"Sounds good," Ellie agreed. "I'm totally okay with getting the fuck out of Ohio. This state sucks."

Actually, every place she'd been outside of Boston had pretty much sucked. And Boston had sucked too. The only real high point was getting to see sprawling open country she hadn't even known existed – but there was a lot of it, and the past few days it had all looked pretty much the same.

They set out an hour later, after they'd broken their makeshift camp and Ellie got a chance to wake up all the way. She was surprised Joel didn't get her up at the crack of dawn every day, since getting to the Fireflies was kind of a time-sensitive thing, but he always seemed content to let her sleep. Just like in the truck, she reflected. _Maybe he's being nice to me because of everything with Sam and Henry._

Or maybe he just didn't want to have to drag her half-awake ass around and be alert for both of them. She didn't like to think that he was babying her. It didn't seem like his style, anyway.

The town Joel had been talking about was farther than he made it sound. By the time they got there, the sun was high overhead, and Ellie was wiping clammy sweat off her forehead even in the chilly fall air.

As they trudged along, she grasped for something to take her mind off the ache in her feet, but all that came to her were thoughts of Sam and Henry.

Finally, desperate to think about something else, she remembered a conversation they'd had the other day. As reticent as Joel could be about his own past, he didn't seem to mind her questions about other subjects, like television and sports teams and libraries. Getting Joel to tell her about things from before had turned into one of her favorite pastimes.

"I wanna hear some more about the Internet," she announced.

The idea of a 'world-wide web' fascinated her. It sounded way more unreal than even the fairy tales she'd heard as a kid about gnomes and dragons and fairies. But Joel talked about it like it was no big deal.

"There ain't that much to tell. It was just something everybody used – kind of like ration cards. Believe it or not, people in my day would have thought waiting hours in line for food sounded crazy."

Ellie scoffed, smiling a little. "Bullshit! There's no way ration lines are crazier than everybody getting all their information from some magic invisible wire."

"Trust me, it's _plenty_ crazy," muttered Joel.

"So, you're saying you used to be able to just…get food whenever you wanted it?"

"Uh-huh," he replied. "Watch your head."

Ellie ducked down under a branch he was holding off to the side, and saw they were at the edge of the woods already. There was a short drop where the ground cleaved off into a gully, and Joel helped her down with his hands on her waist. Ellie's stomach did a little flip-flop that she put off to hunger.

"Man, let's quit talking about food until we actually get some," she groaned dramatically. "I'd fight fifty fucking hunters for a can of those nasty beans right now."

"You think that's funny?"

"Sorry, jeez, it was a joke." She held up her hands in mock surrender.

Joel shook his head. "Look, this won't take long. Let's just focus up and try to get in and out in one piece, alright?"

In the distance, out across a stretch of brownish-gold fields, Ellie could see a scattering of buildings rising out of the earth.

It looked maybe another half hour away. She wondered if Joel knew this town, if he'd ever been through here, before. She knew he was from Texas, and that Texas was a long way from where they were now, but things were easy to get to in those days, weren't they?

"You don't just happen to have another buddy in this town we're going to get food from, do you?" she asked.

"That'd be nice, but no."

"Do we have any kind of a plan? Or are we just gonna go down all the streets until we see a store?"

Joel snorted.

"Ellie, we ain't goin' in any supermarkets."

"Why not? I've never seen one, and you said that's where all the food got kept. It'd be like breaking into a ration storehouse, except we wouldn't have to fight our way past a bunch of soldiers."

"Because," he explained, "they've all been raided years ago. What we find is gonna be in people's houses – if we find anything at all."

"Oh."

Somehow, that hadn't really occurred to Ellie.

When they'd learned about the infection in school – the outbreak, and how it had spread – it had sounded like it mainly hit big cities. In fact, they really only ever heard about what happened in other Quarantine Zones. It kind of made it sound like they were the only places affected.

Part of her had always held out the secret hope that there were some small towns like this one where the infected just never got to. Like maybe life was continuing on like nothing had changed, in little isolated pockets scattered around, and she and Joel just had to find one.

As a kid, back when she didn't know a lot about how Marlene's group actually worked – even less than she did now – she'd kind of thought that was how the Fireflies operated. That they worked out of some secret infection-proof base and went around trying to help everybody stuck on the outside with the fungus.

Even though she knew that was stupid, now, and that the Fireflies were mired in the same shit as everybody else and not at all immune to the infection, seeing this new town filled her with the same kind of irrational hope.

"Man," she sighed, "what I wouldn't give to get to see just one grocery store in mint condition. All that food in one place - that'd be fucking nuts!"

There was a smile in Joel's voice when he replied. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you about convenience stores."

"…Okay, I'll bite. What the fuck is that?"

o

It took the better part of the next twenty minutes for Joel to convince Ellie he wasn't pulling her leg about miniature grocery stores that stayed open twenty-four hours a day just so people could get snack food whenever they felt like it.

The whole idea was so far removed from what she was used to that she was sure he had to be fucking with her. Between scheduled meals at the military school and the half-starvation she'd been living with for the last two weeks, Ellie couldn't wrap her head around food you could get on a whim.

"You lived in strange times," she told him with a little shake of her head.

"Still do," Joel replied.

She had to give him that.

The conversation died off a little when they crossed into the outskirts of the town. Joel was on the lookout for infected, his shoulders stiff and alert, rifle at the ready. Ellie kept a hand on her own gun, and kept her voice down.

"Wow, this place is so different from Boston," she breathed.

All around were tiny houses with plain, rectangular shapes that looked like they must have been falling apart even before their occupants fled. Unlike in the suburbs, they were planted unevenly and far apart, like crooked teeth jutting out at odd angles.

"It ain't much of a town. But it had people, so with any luck, it'll have something for us."

"You sound pretty sure about that."

Joel approached a yellowish house on the left that still had a miniature windmill up in the front yard, and eased the screen door open carefully. "We'll see. C'mon."

A little less than enthusiastically, Ellie followed him in. The inside of the house was musty, and parts of the floor had collapsed. The two of them skirted around the edges of the main room, avoiding the open gaps in the linoleum, toward a little kitchenette that could be seen at the far end.

"This is one weird-ass house," commented Ellie. It was shaped exactly like a shoebox and seemed to have just one main room, except for a single hallway on the opposite end.

"We used to call these single-wides."

Joel was rifling through the cabinets already, a frown of concentration seated firmly on his forehead. "Probably not much in the way of food, but less likely to get raided, too. Bingo," he held up a can of something Ellie didn't recognize – yellow squares with jagged edges, covered in some kind of red sauce. "Used to eat this all the time. It's crap, but it'll keep you going."

She took the can, turning it over curiously before shoving it in her pack. "What else do we got?"

"Not much. We'll probably have to hit a few of these houses before we're full up. Then we can get out of here."

"Cool."

Wandering toward the hallway, Ellie poked around the bare walls and waterstained furniture.

There wasn't a lot to hold her interest in the place. Compared to the other abandoned houses she'd been in, this one was strange and kind of barren. It looked like somebody had grabbed all the photos off the walls before they took off, which struck her as a weird thing to grab. Why leave your food and take keepsakes instead?

Her hand went self-consciously to the folded knife in her back pocket. That was different, she told herself. Something easy to carry, sure, especially if it was useful. But a bunch of framed pictures…that was fucking crazy.

"Hey."

Lost in thought about the former owners of the house, Ellie jumped when Joel's voice came from right behind her shoulder.

"We're done here. You alright?"

She nodded quickly. "Yeah. Yeah, just…looking around."

"Well, let's go."

Everything was almost eerily silent as they moved on to the next three houses, two of which were a total bust.

On the one hand, it was nice to have a break from the rasping sounds of the infected that had followed them almost constantly back in the sewers. But it left Ellie waiting for the other shoe to drop. Somehow the woods were different. There, she could share a comfortable silence with Joel.

The infected didn't feel like they belonged with trees and rocks and open sky, and in the whole time she and Joel had been traveling in the wilderness, they'd hardly run into any, except when they went near a town.

But something about being in between four walls again made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. _That's stupid,_ she told herself. _We haven't seen any people or bodies here. If there aren't any people, there's nothing for the infected to eat! You need to calm down and stop borrowing trouble._

For once, Joel actually didn't seem too worried. She wouldn't call him relaxed, exactly. Even when he was asleep Ellie didn't feel like she'd ever really seen him drop his guard. There was something easier in the way he moved, though, like he wasn't a nail bomb constantly set to go off.

Maybe this was what he was like before, she realized. When there wasn't a threat coming from every corner.

This house turned out to be a gold mine, too: four cans of food, a bunch of clean bandages, and some energy bars, which Ellie had only seen a couple times in her life. Joel tucked those away like they were made of pure gold, and the look on his face told her it was the most valuable find of the day.

The best part was, unlike all its neighbors they'd hit so far, this house had a basement.

"I bet there's a motherload down there!" crowed Ellie, starting down the long, narrow steps into pitch darkness.

Joel put a hand out to stop her, and shook his head.

"You stay up here," he told her, "keep an eye out so nothin' can come behind us and trap us down there. If you see anything, you holler to me."

"Sure. If I see any suspicious-looking clouds roll by, you'll be the first to hear about it."

"Don't take your eyes off that front door. I mean it."

"Okay, yes! I got it. Sheesh."

"Alright. Good."

With a nod, he disappeared down the staircase. The house suddenly seemed a lot bigger, and a lot emptier. The silence loomed up around her until she started imagining noises, little creaks and groans of floorboards.

And then there was an unmistakable sound she knew didn't come from her imagination. It was the screech of a clicker, followed by a gunshot. And it was coming from under the house.

"Oh fuck!" she shouted, fumbling her own gun out and sprinting toward the basement door.

The thought flashed briefly across her mind that Joel was going to be pissed she hadn't stayed put like he told her, but it was quickly dashed aside by the fact that he obviously needed her down there. Even if a bunch of infected showed up and butt-rushed them at the exit, there was no way she was leaving him to tangle with the thing by himself.

The sounds of a struggle were growing louder every second, and Ellie's heart thudded double-time as she realized it wasn't just one clicker.

She scrabbled for her light in the darkness. As soon as it came on, she wished she hadn't.

There was a flailing, screeching mass of five or six infected all crowded at the end of the room, writhing like a ball of worms, their sickly flesh-colored growths glistening in the glow of the flashlight.

They were gathered around something, Ellie realized – Joel. She could hear him grunting with effort, swinging a board at them, but he didn't stand a chance that way. One of them was going to take a chunk out of him, if they hadn't already.

_Oh fuck,_ she thought, Sam's twitching, fungus-riddled corpse coming suddenly to mind with a sickening lurch of her stomach, _don't be bitten. Don't be bitten. Please don't –_

Before she knew it, she was shouting,

"Hey, you motherfuckers! Over here! Come and fucking get it!"

One or two of the clickers looked up, screamed, and spun toward her, their arms out and seeking. But her distraction wasn't enough. The others still had Joel on the ground, and Ellie could feel panic rising in her throat.

She fired at the closest clicker. The shot winged it, and she heard the bullet ricochet off something. The second one wrapped its vice-like fingers around her arm and she barely had time to grab a shiv with shaking hands and stab it in the throat.

"Joel!" she screamed as it went down, blind panic making her struggle toward him, slashing and hacking at the clickers still between her and him.

One of them exploded into a spray of gore as Joel managed to get off a shot from his own gun, and Ellie shoved its corpse away from her, still swinging her blade wildly. The other two went down, though whether she got them or Joel did, she could barely make out.

Nothing made any sense; Joel was on the ground and there was blood all over him and _no no no no oh fuck NO –_

"Get up," she heard herself urging him, voice high and thin. It sounded a million miles away and like it was coming from someone else. "Get _up_, Joel, come on, _please_! You gotta move your ass!"

"I'm fine," he answered gruffly. "Come on, we're gettin' out of here."

Getting to his feet seemed to take Joel a lifetime, as Ellie's stomach wrung itself into knots and her blood rushed in her ears. There was so much blood on him. _Surrounded by clickers like that, there's no way he wasn't bitten. What do I do? What the fuck do I do?_

"Let me look," she said, reaching for his arm and the spot on his chest that was soaked red. "Fucking _let me see_, Joel!"

Her hands shook violently, and she realized she was grabbing at his shirt, her fingers fisted in the sticky plaid.

"Ellie!" Joel's voice was like a thunderclap. He pushed her off roughly. "There's no time for that. We need to leave, you understand?"

She didn't remember her response. But her body seemed to move of its own accord, following Joel's instructions mechanically, as though that were the only natural thing to do.

They ran at full tilt, past rows of houses and street signs, until everything thinned out into tall grass and livestock fences. Finally, once the town was a good half-mile behind them, Joel stopped and bent double, breathing hard with his hands braced on his knees. Ellie stopped too. For a minute, their quick, harsh breaths were the only sound.

"Shit," Joel muttered. "Somebody must've been using that place to hole up in, and the lot of 'em got infected. That's why there was so much stuff there."

Ellie stared at him in disbelief. How could he even waste time thinking about that? They had a way more pressing problem!

"Let me see where they got you," she said, her voice way more steady than she felt.

"What – ? Ellie, I said I'm fine. I ain't bit."

"Sam said that too! He said he was okay, and then he turned."

Tears pricked at Ellie's eyes, and she balled her hands into fists, looking up at Joel challengingly.

Comprehension dawned on the man's face, and slowly, he undid the first two buttons of his shirt. Underneath, his chest was smeared and matted with blood, but clean of bite marks. Ellie thought her legs might buckle from relief.

Joel gestured to the blood. "There's a lot of it, but it ain't mine. Alright?"

"Y– yeah."

"We good?"

He looked like he wanted so badly for the answer to be yes that Ellie nodded, even though she didn't feel 'good'. She felt small, and scared, even worse than when they'd seen that first clicker, what felt like ages ago.

She'd managed not to think about Sam, for the most part, after they left the radio tower behind.

It was how you got on: by shoving things down, and making a fresh start. She could deal with it, then, even though it was awful, because they'd barely known Sam and Henry. She'd been doing alright. People died in Ellie's world all the time, and getting used to that taught her to keep the grief at bay. Made it manageable. Joel helped, too, just by being around, solid and constant in his surly quietness like a law of nature.

But the abrupt reminder that the same thing could happen to him just as easily made the full weight of what had happened hit her again like a freight truck. The image of Sam's small, still body under a stained blanket filled her limbs with a kind of leaden numbness. And slowly, Sam's body became Joel's, riddled over with fungus.

_What happens if you _do_ get bit?_ Ellie wanted to ask. _I can't pull the trigger on you, Joel. I can't fucking do it._

Instead, she swallowed the dread that followed that thought and hugged her arms around herself.

"Let's just go."

For a second, Joel hesitated. Ellie silently pleaded for him to let it go at that.

He must have worked out that she didn't want to talk, because he made a sympathetic face, but turned away without a word, and started off for the tree line.

She followed him, trying not to let her thoughts stray onto Sam or Henry or that close fucking call down in the basement, and how shitty it all made her feel. But it was like someone had hollowed her out with a spoon and replaced her insides with ice. Every step she took got heavier, until she was dragging her feet over sticks and rocks and underbrush.

In her head, Ellie tried to go over some of the puns from her joke book, but as awful and cheesy as they all were, none of it made her want to laugh. No matter how she tried, she couldn't seem to shake free of the feeling.

_This sucks,_ she told Joel's silent back. _This really fucking sucks._

o

It was hard to say when, but Joel noticed.

He stopped telling her to keep up as often and slowed down for her instead. There wasn't much else to do – the girl seemed to travel at a set pace, and trying to get her to move faster only got a nod or a shrug. For all she talked big about the things she'd seen, her tough kid act was starting to wear thin in places, and it woke something in Joel that had been dead a long time.

The worst thing he could do was to handle her with kid-gloves, that much was obvious. But he couldn't put the same force behind his usual roughness. She looked so miserable that it cut to the bone. There was something unnerving about seeing the usually energetic girl like that, and it cut him to the bone.

It made him want to reach out to her, and resisting that impulse took every year of hardened indifference Joel had lived through.

Around mid-afternoon they reached a stream, shallow enough for Ellie to cross without help. She sloshed through it with clumsy feet, and Joel glanced back to see her trudging up the bank with her head down. He sighed.

"Come on, hurry up now. There's an old ranger station I want to get to by sunset, and we ain't makin' very good time."

"I'll walk faster," she promised without enthusiasm.

For a moment he just stood there looking her over, trying to figure out what he was going to do with her. He didn't have the energy for this shit. His bones ached after the long day of walking and running for their lives, and he wouldn't even know where to start with cheering an upset teenager up. She needed a bigger distraction than he was in a position to provide.

Then an idea struck him, and a slow, crooked half-smile started to curl at one side of his mouth.

"You know what? C'mere. I want to show you somethin'."

That seemed to pique her curiosity a little. Usually when they were on the move, Joel didn't take any breaks, unless she had to piss really bad and got loud about it. It was obvious she wasn't expecting the reprieve.

"Look here." He crouched down, pointing at the muddy dirt by the stream. "See that?"

Ellie squinted.

"What are they?"

"Deer tracks," he replied. "Somebody's been usin' this spot as a waterin' hole. Looks like they're pretty fresh, too – might have taken off when it heard us coming."

"Oh. Neat."

Rising to his feet with a little grunt, Joel brushed his hands off. "Alright, we're havin' a change of plans. I'm gonna teach you how to hunt."

Ellie raised her eyebrows.

"What about the ranger station?" she asked skeptically.

"Oh, I reckon it'll still be there tomorrow."

The girl glanced around, looking a little thrown.

"Seriously?"

Joel spread his hands in a gesture of 'search me', as if to show he wasn't hiding any tricks up his sleeves. "Uh-huh. Figured after that run-in back there, neither of us is in too much of a hurry to have to head back into the city next time we're running low on food."

"Yeah, tell me about it," she muttered.

"'Course, it's been a while since I hunted anything 'cept ration cards, but I think I've still got the edge."

There was a sort of bitter note to the subdued humor in Joel's voice, thinking about the people attached to those cards. If anyone had told him back in his days as a hunter that he'd be here ten years later, all ties severed and helping some strange kid get across the country – cheering her up, for Christ's sake – he'd have sneered at the idea. But it felt natural, in a way killing tourists to survive never had.

This, for the first time in a long time, felt _right_.

Ellie crossed her arms, making an unconvinced face as though she didn't believe he could ever have had an edge.

"If food was so easy to get back in your day, how come you had to hunt?"

"We didn't have to," replied Joel, who was looking around the clearing, probably to see if there were more tracks. "It was mostly for fun."

"Weird idea of fun."

"Yeah, I guess it was."

"But, I mean, if it keeps us from having to fight a bunch of infected over a couple cans of creamed corn, I'm all for it," she added. It was all the agreement Joel needed.

"Alright, come on over here, then."

When Ellie followed the direction, he pointed to a thicket of bushes by their knees. Some of the twigs had been snapped and flattened down. It was a good place to start, teaching her tracking – she'd have to concentrate, and that would take her mind off of whatever was bothering her more efficiently than anything else.

"Now, you're not just looking for tracks," he explained, putting a hand on the girl's shoulder and showing her where to look. "Right here – you can see where our deer did some damage bolting out of here. We follow that trail, and we'll find him. Bet he didn't go too far."

o

On the other side of a stand of trees, there was another patch of trampled grass. With Joel in tow, hanging back to let her get the hang of it, Ellie looked around, trying to see where the trail went. It looked like it might end there, and she sighed in frustration.

Then, a few feet ahead, she spotted a branch that had been snapped off.

"Oh shit!" she breathed. "Joel, over here! I think he went this way."

"Shh, Ellie, not so loud," he cautioned, moving her aside to inspect the branch. "We don't want to spook him, alright?"

"Oh, yeah." Ellie ducked her head sheepishly. "Guess I'm not exactly a natural at this."

Joel tapped her shoulder, urging her through the gap between the trees. "Go on, now, let's just keep it down."

She crept forward a little hesitantly, like the deer might be right on the other side of the next thicket of trees. They were spread out enough to see a ways, but that didn't make her feel any less conspicuous as leaves crunched and twigs snapped under her heel. _Crap, I'm leaving a trail of my own,_ she thought. Not like an animal would be tracking them – that was only something they had to worry about with other people around.

Amazingly, the little clues – footprints here, fur snagged on a branch there – didn't come to any dead ends, and with Joel's occasional help, Ellie was able to follow them for a good half-mile.

There was a kind of intensity to sneaking through the forest, keeping her breathing quiet and staying on the lookout for any sign of their prey. It was totally different from the tension of sneaking through a city or a clicker-infested basement. This time, she was trying not to be heard by something that _wasn't _going to kill her, for once.

In a way, it was kind of fun.

By the time they caught up with the deer, Ellie had become completely absorbed in concentrating on the trail. The animal was just up ahead, a smudge of solid tan that she barely saw through the leaves and branches between them.

"There!" she whispered to Joel.

He just raised his eyebrows in acknowledgment, one finger up to his lips. Slowly, he made his way over until he was crouched right behind her, looking over the top of her head. When he spoke, his voice was so low and close to her ear that it tickled.

"Be real still. We don't want to spook him."

Ellie nodded. A shiver ran down her spine. Her whole body was buzzing with excitement, a pleasant sort of tension from the hunt, but part of it was the closeness of Joel's body behind her. She could feel the heat of him against her back, and his breath in her ear made something catch tight in her chest. _Shit, I'm way too nervous to get off a good shot,_ she berated herself.

Before she could say anything, it was like Joel read her mind.

"Here, lemme see that bow of yours," he whispered, and his deep voice rumbled straight to the pit of her stomach.

A while ago, after they picked up the rifle, she'd ended up carrying the bow so Joel had more room on his own back. It had gotten to be a comfortable weight against her shoulder. Now, as he slid it free, Ellie felt a little bit off-balance without it there – almost naked.

Joel leaned in to whisper to her again, and gooseflesh went up all over her arms.

"You know how to use a bow and arrow, 's that right?"

Not daring to speak, Ellie just nodded. Her heart was racing.

"Be careful now. You only get one shot, because the arrow'll spook him if you miss. Just…take a nice, deep breath, and try to loosen up."

Just like when he'd taught her to hold the rifle, he put a hand out to help keep her steady, this time on the small of her back. It helped with balance, given the way she was crouched. But something about it made Ellie's nerves light up worse than they already were.

She exhaled shallowly.

"…Okay."

Loosening up turned out to be easier said than done. All her nerves were singing with tension, and she wished Joel wasn't pressed so close behind her. It left something warm burning under her ribcage, a distraction she couldn't quite put her finger on, and she ended up holding her breath instead of taking it in slow like he'd said.

She pulled back the way she'd been taught, until she could feel the arrow trembling against her fingers. This bow was bigger than the one she'd used before, and bending it was way harder than it looked. There was no way her arrow was going to fly straight.

_At least I'm not trying to hit a moving target,_ she thought, and loosed the shot.

It whistled through the trees, straight over the back of the deer, who raised his head in alarm and glanced around before sprinting off into the cover of the forest.

"Aw, fuck! He got away."

Ellie sprang up.

Joel looked like he was just on the edge of laughing, more at her reaction than at her failure, which soothed the burn a little. "He sure did."

"Well, are we gonna chase him?" she asked impatiently, slipping the bow onto her back and taking a step in the direction their prey had gone.

"That's probably alright. I'm not sure we'd know what to do with a buck that big if we got 'im."

He was right. For one thing, they had nowhere to store the meat, even if they could find a way to smoke it, which they didn't have time for. Most of it would have gone to waste. Joel had to have known that, so why did he even bother taking the time to show her how to hunt it in the first place?

Realization hit her like a stone.

Suddenly, Ellie felt like an idiot. The whole hunting idea had been to get her out of her funk. It had totally worked, too, and an immense gratitude welled up inside her.

For the first time since Pittsburgh, she didn't want to curl up and hide when she thought of the road ahead – or the road behind. The rolling, bright excitement of the hunt was still thrumming through her veins, and she felt _good._ Like herself again.

It had cost them a half a day of travel, and he'd done it for her.

_Holy shit. Thanks, Joel._

"Yeah, I guess it's okay," she said, turning back to him with a tiny smile. "Next time, right? I seriously need to brush up on that bow if I ever want to catch anything, though."

Satisfaction shone in the man's eyes, even though he was quick to bury it under a gruff nod. He scratched his beard and then clapped a hand on her shoulder. It was brief, but the contact made Ellie feel about a thousand feet tall.

Joel looked thoughtful. After a moment, he spoke up.

"You know, you don't have to be able to shoot to hunt. How 'bout I teach you how to make a snare?"

o

They set three traps, made from some of the wire in Joel's pack. He showed her how to tie the snare off, and how to curve a branch to make a trigger.

"The problem with snares," he explained as they crouched in the bushes a couple hundred yards away from the last one, "is it can take all day to catch somethin'. You gotta remember where you set it, and you gotta come back along and check it every once in a while, if you don't want somebody else gettin' your kill."

Ellie nodded intently. She was more interested in hearing Joel talk than in learning about snares, but she paid attention all the same.

Something about his voice was soothing as hell. Maybe it was the rise and fall of his Southern inflection, or the way it rumbled up from deep in his chest, but she felt weirdly at home listening to it. Lots of guys back in the Zone had the same accent, but the way they pinched everything out through their noses, Ellie couldn't imagine it having this effect. It had never seemed particularly special before.

Joel's voice, though, tripped some switch inside her that made her want to listen for hours.

"Ellie? You payin' attention?"

"Uh – yeah!" The tips of her ears turned hot. "Check the traps, don't let assholes steal your shit, takes for-fucking-ever, yada yada."

He folded his arms.

"Actually, I was just saying we need to start thinkin' about making camp soon."

Ellie grinned sheepishly. "Oh, yeah, that."

"Let's check our snares over, and see if we can't find some shelter." He stepped out of the bushes, and she followed, wondering what kind of 'shelter' they were going to find out in the middle of the woods.

To her disappointment, the first two traps were empty. Joel spooled the wire and put it back in his pack. He didn't seem surprised by their lack of success. Still, after fucking up with the deer, Ellie really hoped they'd be able to at least catch _something_.

When she saw the last trap, she actually punched the air and shouted in victory. Dangling from the wire was a plump grey squirrel, still kicking and wriggling.

"Oh _fuck_ yes!" she crowed, running over to pull it down.

Its teeth snapped at the sensitive skin between her thumb and forefinger. Ellie swore loudly and sprang back, shaking her injured hand.

"Careful," Joel said, stepping up and wringing the squirrel's neck in one swift, efficient motion. "You don't want a case of goddamn rabies."

She whistled. "Jeez, that was brutal."

Ignoring the comment, Joel unhooked the snare and looped it behind the animal's limp head so he could hang it from his pack. Ellie watched it bounce slightly with each step he took. She'd seen that same efficiency break human necks – but those people had been trying to kill them.

_And that squirrel is going to feed us,_ she reminded herself.

They hiked through the woods a ways, the sun slowly setting lower and lower behind them. She honestly had no idea what Joel was looking for, but she figured he'd stop when they found it.

Sure enough, as they came to the bottom of a rock face, he slowed and craned his neck back, squinting up at something Ellie couldn't see. It was steep, but not tall, with deep grooves in the smooth grey stone. Nothing about it seemed especially out of the ordinary.

Joel, though, seemed to feel differently.

"Looks like this is us for the night," he announced.

"What? I don't see anything. It's a bunch of rocks."

Joel pointed. "Up there – there's a cave we can hole up in. Best shelter we're gonna find. Doesn't look like too bad of a climb, either."

She laughed and stared at him, halfway between amusement and disbelief. "You wanna – you wanna _scale_ that thing? That's like a straight up cliff. No way I can climb that, and no offense, but I doubt your old bones can handle it either."

"Trust me," he replied with a sideways look, "these 'old bones' can manage just fine."

"Well, what about me?"

"You go on up first. I'll be right behind you."

He gestured for her to get a start. Ellie glanced incredulously at the crumbling cliff, then back at Joel, who raised eyebrows impatiently. With a sigh, she stepped up toe-to-toe with the rocks, and began to look for a handhold.

Once she found one, it was surprisingly easy going. A few feet off the ground, though, she broke her own rule and glanced back down. The drop threatened to make her dizzy until she noticed Joel was just a couple of steps behind.

"Oh man," she mumbled, turning her face back to the smooth stone in front of her.

Her next step was more confident, though. It was only a few more feet to the top – she could make it. Joel was behind her. She'd be fine.

Ellie's foot made contact with a groove in the stone. It seemed to hold for a second, until she put her full weight on it. Then, with a sickening lurch, she found herself falling through empty space. Terror snatched the air out of her lungs, and she let out a breathless scream as her back collided with something hard.

"Whoa, easy now," grunted Joel's voice in her ear, sounding almost as shaken by Ellie's sudden slip as she felt. "I gotcha. I gotcha."

They stayed still like that for a few moments, Joel with one hand fitted firmly into the curve of Ellie's waist and the other clinging to his own handhold in the rock face, until her heartbeat stopped hammering and climbed back down out of her throat, and she could breathe again.

As she calmed down, the sensation of the hard, solid wall of Joel's body against her back came into sharp focus. Just like in the bushes earlier, stalking the deer, something hot settled in the pit of Ellie's stomach, and she felt her cheeks burn.

She didn't want to move, she realized, and not just because she was afraid of falling again.

"You okay?" Joel's breath curled hot across her ear, and his whiskers tickled her cheek. Ellie squeezed her eyes shut, praying he couldn't feel the way she trembled against him.

"I'm – I'm good," she stammered, pulling away with electric quickness to press herself back against the stone.

"Alright. Let's keep moving, then."

From behind, Joel gave her a little push to get her going again. She was careful to test every step after that before putting her weight on it, but there weren't any more loose rocks to stumble on. It was just as well, with her knees still weak and her legs shaky, a combination of leftover nerves and the warm feeling that was still tying knots in her gut.

Ellie scrambled up over the edge of the cliff and turned back to help Joel after her, but he was already heaving himself up. The muscles in his arms strained with effort, and she couldn't help staring. He'd lifted plenty of things, her included. Had that been so…hot before? She couldn't remember noticing.

But it was definitely really fucking hot now.

_Stop it_, she told herself furiously. _Don't think about that. Just – stop._ Spinning on her heel, the girl stalked away, trying not to glance back.

"Ellie!"

Joel's exasperated tone brought her up short, embarrassed by her own overreaction.

When she turned around, he was looking at her with a curious expression. "Cave's over here."

"Uh, right! I knew that."

Hoping she was making something even close to a normal expression, Ellie adjusted her pack, gave Joel a thumbs-up, and followed him to the low, dark entrance he pointed out, farther along the ridge.

o

Things returned a little more to normal after they set up camp.

Joel had built a tiny fire just outside the mouth of the cave, and they roasted the squirrel over it on a makeshift spit. With the distraction of food and a conversation that didn't revolve around getting from point A to point B, Ellie almost forgot about the feeling she'd had earlier. The fire was warm, and Joel's deep chuckle filled her like hot tea on a winter day back at the boarding school.

"No shit!" she insisted seriously, laughing hard at the story she'd just told. "They caught me putting pigeons in the officers' soup when I was on mess duty, so they confiscated our BB gun and put me on latrines for like a moth. I guess that was the last straw, because I got transferred right after that."

"I can see why the Fireflies recruited you," said Joel.

"Hey, sabotage isn't my only skill. I could hit a bird in the eye with that BB gun from like fifty feet away."

"Yeah, I bet you could."

Joel fell silent after that – probably thinking about how he didn't like Ellie shooting stuff. Looking for a way to change the topic, she took a giant bite out of her squirrel leg.

"Fuck _me_, this is a million times better than beans," she moaned.

"If you think that's good, you should've tasted real Texas barbecue." There was real regret in Joel's voice, and the look on his face said he was far away, thinking about another time. "I swear, Ellie, you never tasted anything like it. It's a goddamn shame, is what it is."

Ellie watched him, bathed golden in the firelight, his eyes shut and head tilted back in rapture over some remembered taste. That uneasy heat stirred in her stomach again. _Handsome,_ she realized. _He looks handsome._

Suddenly uncomfortable, she shifted around, chewing another mouthful of squirrel. A diversion – she needed a diversion, and fast.

"Maybe you could teach me how to make it," she tried lamely.

"Naw, it's complicated. You need a rub, and a good sauce. I could never barbecue worth a damn anyway. More of a TV dinner guy."

"Well, I think you're an okay cook. I mean, we'll see if I'm puking my guts up tomorrow, but for now you get the Ellie Williams Seal of Approval."

Joel snorted. "It's cooked. You'll be fine."

Ellie took a sip off the canteen of water they were sharing, hoping it would settle her nervous stomach.

No matter what, her brain kept circling back around to the feeling of being pressed up against him, his arms the only thing keeping her from a deadly fall. _Think about getting food poisoning instead. Think about a clicker biting your head off! Just think about anything but fucking _that_!_ she admonished herself furiously.

Fortunately, the meal was pretty much over. Joel had a habit of either going to bed or taking up a restless watch right after they finished eating, and that was true tonight, too. He stood up and stretched. Ellie glanced away.

"Alright," said Joel, his thick drawl shot through with a yawn, "let's get this fire put out and turn in for the night."

_Oh, no._

Ellie hadn't even thought about it, between being flustered over the sudden realization of her very physical attraction to the older man and trying _not_ to be flustered, but they'd been sleeping close for warmth ever since it started turning colder.

Suddenly, going to bed wasn't a line of retreat. It was a fucking nightmare. Spending eight hours pressed up against Joel, soaking up his body heat, sounded like torture.

_Just don't be a fucking weirdo about it and it'll be fine!_ she tried to tell herself, but as they kicked dirt over the fire and spread out their packs side-by-side to use as pillows, all she could feel was the urge to freak out.

Things didn't have to get weird. Maybe he was hot, okay, yeah. So what? She was just acknowledging an objective fact. It didn't mean anything.

Ellie kept repeating that to herself as she settled in beside Joel. The steady heat of his back should have been a comfort, but instead it sunk straight to the pit of her stomach and then, to her horror, between her legs. Mortified, she squirmed under the thin blanket that covered them both and pressed her thighs together tight, trying to kill the feeling. Moving away wasn't an option, because she'd fucking freeze. But if she stayed there, it was only going to get worse.

_What do I do? Just ignore it?_ Slowly but surely, the heat was becoming an ache, and the ache was becoming unbearable.

This wasn't like back in the dormitories, though. Joel was _right fucking next to her_ and there was no way she could get off without waking him up. Plus, that felt like crossing a serious line.

On the other hand, if she didn't take care of this, she definitely wouldn't be getting any sleep.

As if to drive that point home, another throbbing wave of frustration swept over her, and Ellie squeezed her eyes shut, like that would turn everything below her neck off. Next to her, Joel shifted and groaned in his sleep, and she stiffened instantly. It was just one of his bad dreams. She knew that – he had them almost every night. But the sound went through her like electricity, putting every hair on her body on end.

On the off chance that he was actually awake, not dreaming, she laid stock-still until she heard his breathing even out again into a telltale rhythmic rise and fall. Even then, Ellie waited a few minutes, not daring to move.

But slowly, her need began to win out, and her fingers crept down her stomach toward the waistband of her jeans.

Another restless grunt from Joel scared her nearly out of her skin. Heart hammering, she froze for a second, before sliding tentative fingers into her underwear. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched the dark shape of Joel's body, faintly outlined by moonlight. He didn't so much as twitch.

That made her bolder, and she felt around until her fingertips grazed the spot she was looking for. She bit her lip to keep quiet, and curled her fingers into herself.

It felt like forever since she'd done this, and the feeling built on her fast, like a river rushing toward the dam. Ellie swallowed a breathy sigh, determined to stay completely silent. Waves of sharp pleasure washed over her, making her squirm and push up against her own hand.

But no matter what she did, she couldn't push herself over that edge. She didn't dare move too much and risk waking Joel up, but her slow, careful rhythm wasn't even close to enough.

And then it happened.

Out of nowhere, Ellie realized she'd started imagining that her fingers were broad, rough-calloused. Joel's fingers. The same ones that had gripped her arm hard to pull her up when she nearly fell into a ravine a few days back, and that had pressed into her hip when he caught her fall earlier on the cliff.

What would that feel like, she wondered? How different would everything be if it were Joel with his hand shoved into her jeans, his firm chest against her back? A gasp slipped from her lips as she imagined him rocking into her from behind.

_This is so fucked up. _

The thought came on as suddenly as her arousal had, and it hit her just as hard.

Just like that, she knew she wasn't going to get anywhere no matter what she did, but she kept trying for a few minutes anyway. It was no good. Anytime she started to get really turned on again, she found herself thinking of Joel, and then guilt hit her like a brick wall, knocking all the wind out of her sails.

"Ughhh!"

Finally, she gave a muffled groan of frustrated disgust, and gave up.

With a resentful glare at the cave ceiling, Ellie rolled onto her side, facing away from Joel. At least the whole ordeal hadn't seemed to wake him up, she thought miserably. One of them was going to get some sleep tonight, at any rate.

Feeling absolutely crummy, she closed her eyes and made a futile effort to fall asleep.


End file.
